I like those little Field Notes notebooks, except I never go out into the field so I’m not sure I have any use for such a notebook. Someone should create a Food Notes version, then we’d be talking. This monthly wrap is based on what I imagine I’d have recorded in a Food Notes notebook if I had one.
A sweet treat
I’ve become accustomed to a little sweet treat after dinner. Not usually my style, I’m typically more a cheese for pudding kind of woman. But lately I’ve been enjoying a small square of icing sugar dusted Turkish delight, made by Haci Bekir, which is a confectioner based in Istanbul. I order my boxes – yes, boxes – of Turkish delight from New Plymouth of all places.
The other post-dinner sweet treat I’ve been enjoying is a square of Al Brown’s very good ginger crunch. It pays to keep the lopsided edges that you cut off to yield perfect squares of the stuff. They’re chewy and sticky and utterly delicious.
Even though I’m not really a sweet tooth, there are occasionally desserts that I adore and that stay on my mind for weeks. This month it was the angel food cake with blueberries, plum sorbet and cinnamon cream that marked the end of a very good dinner at Rita. My friend Michael said the plum sorbet tasted like the plums he used to pick from a tree at home.
Chaat means “to lick”
I have a mild obsession with kitsch Indian diners. Places with Bollywood music videos on a TV suspended haphazardly on a wall, and Christmas lights twinkling in the windows to lure you in. There's a place that fits the bill across the road from my house, Spice Paradise. There are plastic brown tablecloths that have what appears to be lace draped over them, which on close inspection you realise is laminated. There's a small canvas on the wall by the counter that says, "Today I am excited about everything.”
It doesn't matter that these places don't look like much, that they're a bit hodge-podge. The food is good and generous and cheap and the service is warm and that's why you go. That's true at the Spicy P, where Sunil the owner genuinely and earnestly wants your feedback on the food and tells you what ingredients he's cooked the lamb shank in, and that there's mint in the nimbu paani (Indian lemonade) to help with weight loss. I need much more than one-eighth of a teaspoon of dried mint. Sunil was at pains to tell me how embarrassed he was that the woman who designed his menu called the mixed platter a non-vegetarian platter, because "it does have vegetarian items on it."
We go for the chaat mostly - but the curries are good too. We like the samosa chaat and the papri chaat. Sunil tells us that "chaat" means "to lick" or "to taste", and that it's okay to lick the slick of sauce coating our fingers. The naan bread is soft and pillowy, because Sunil puts a little milk into his dough. The tikka paneer and chicken cooked in the tandoor oven to order are delicious, especially the paneer. I think when we go next, we must order the chips from the kids' menu to dip into our curry sauce. I need to try the gulab jamun and a cup of chai with biscuits sometime too.
Best of all was when Sunil obliged and let us put the cricket on, even though the Black Caps were dropping every catch. He got his son to do the streaming and told us he's got a new app coming soon that will have 300 sports channels. Coming soon, like the liquor license that's been months in the making. Friends and I declared that we can't think of anything better - fairy lights, sport on the telly, chaat and cold beers.
Tomato and cheese sandwiches
When you live across the road from Moore Wilson's you think about the year not in terms of four seasons, but by the arrival of certain food items. September/October it's asparagus, February/March big juicy figs. My favourite time of year is February when Jos' heirloom tomatoes from the Wairarapa arrive. The cherry tomatoes arrive first, and then slowly the heirlooms trickle in. I pop in most mornings on the way to work to check whether they've arrived, and to get in before everyone else does. Unlike asparagus which drops in price as its season goes on, the heirloom tomatoes sit steady at $15.95 a kilo, significantly more expensive than the truss tomatoes, which are excellent at this time of year too, but there's a reason the heirlooms are more expensive.
I like mine sliced thickly and sandwiched with mild cheddar cheese and a crack of black pepper between two slices of toasted Wellington Sourdough No 5 loaf that's been spread thickly with Best Foods mayonnaise. There's no breakfast like it.
Other sandwiches
BLTs are good at this time of year, but for those the truss tomatoes do the trick. So does white death loaf, preferably the extra-thick sliced stuff.
The other sandwich that has been rinsed and repeated for workday lunch more times than I dare count is a very good one: spread two slices of Wellington Sourdough No 5 loaf with Best Foods mayonnaise. Be generous. Spread one slice of bread with an equally generous lick of Anathoth Farmstyle Pickle. Top each slice of bread with slices of cheese – mild cheddar, or the Dairyworks pre-cut gouda if you’re feeling lazy as I often am – and then top one slice of cheesed-bread with about four or five thin slices of cucumber. Season with a good grinding of black pepper. Sandwich it all together. Rinse and repeat.
One day I did mix things up and made a sandwich with smoked chicken, cottage cheese, jalapenos, lettuce and cheddar. That was delicious. It even generated a “Good sandwich” text from Phillip.
The most important meal of the day is in bed
Breakfast in bed is a treat, though it’s bordering on becoming less treat and more regular occurrence on a Saturday and Sunday in this household, a consequence of both too much time not spent in bed during the week, and being child-free. The breakfast in bed of all breakfasts in bed was a little bowl of chopped up leftover sausage pieces with Al Brown’s kasundi tomato sauce and two sourdough crumpets with marmalade we bought from Field & Green’s closing down, sell-all the cutlery and pots sale. Strong coffee, of course, and all served on a wooden tray. The sausages and sauce in a bowl in bed is something my great-grandmother Elsie used to do for breakfast when my Mum and her siblings stayed the night. Of course, Else’s tomato sauce wasn’t new-fangle-dangled kasundi stuff. It was probably homemade, but truly, how iconic from Elsie.
I’m back making ‘House Granola’. There’d been a lost-count-of-how-many-months-hiatus. Goodness knows why because my homemade stuff is a million miles better than the stuff you buy in over-priced packets and boxes. I toast rolled oats, crushed up cornflakes, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, raisins, sultanas and small diced pieces of dried apricot. Sometimes I throw in the odds and bods collection of nuts that’s built up in the pantry. Occasionally I’ll throw in a smattering of sesame seeds. There are no specific quantities. You just throw it all in and hope for the best. It’s hard to fuck up.
Omelettes and watermelon seeds
On breakfast, I’ve lost count of how many omelettes Phil has cooked for me now. There are breakfast omelettes and lunch omelettes – the latter always served with a handful of salad leaves, dressed with homemade vinaigrette made from Dijon mustard, olive oil and white wine vinegar which I now keep in a little old caper jar stored on the top shelf of the fridge. It can sit there for weeks and still be fine after a vigorous shake. The omelettes are as good as ever. I particularly liked one for breakfast recently with a piece of buttered Wellington Sourdough toast, a cup of coffee from the Moccamaster and a plate of little triangles of watermelon.
I am a pathetic child and either need to pick out or spit out my watermelon seeds. I’m trying to get better at just swallowing the things as I eat the sandy pink fruit. You get much stickier fingers when you spit and pick watermelon seeds. That’s the downside.
Oh, and white pepper – which I’m using a little interchangeably with black these days – has quite a strong, peculiar odour. Barnlike. You notice these things when you take time to linger over an omelette and are no longer distracted by Kim Hill.
<3 condiments <3
Overcome with love and affection on Valentine’s Day I decided I’d cook my mate steak and chips. You know my thoughts on cooking steak and chips if you follow my musings closely. The steaks were a bit average – Moore Wilson’s is better than New World for procuring dead cow. But the aioli and salsa verde that I made to go with the dead cow and the chips were good. Both recipes courtesy of Alison Roman. I’ll share them here because I think they’re good. You can most definitely sub the lemon juice for white vinegar in the aioli, which is actually called “Mayonnaise for people who hate mayonnaise.” I am not one of those people, so I just call it aioli.
Aioli/M4PWHM
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, plus more as needed (you can also use white vinegar)
Kosher salt
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup grapeseed or vegetable oil
1 small garlic clove, finely grated (optional)
1. Whisk the egg yolks, mustard, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt together in a medium bowl. Combine both oils together in a measuring cup with a spout.
2. In a slow, steady stream add the oils to the egg mixture, 1 tablespoon at a time, whisking all along, making sure the oil is completely incorporated before whisking more in. Add all the oil, thinning with water or more lemon juice, as needed, to keep the future mayonnaise from becoming too thick.
3. Whisk in the garlic, if using, and season with more salt and lemon juice, as desired.
NB: Alison Roman prefers to make her aioli/mayonnaise manually. I prefer to use my KitchenAid. Another salsa verde (that's what Alison calls it)
1/2 small shallot, finely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, red wine vinegar, or white wine vinegar, plus more as needed
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups tender herbs, such as parsley, cilantro, chives, and/or mint (pick one or more of them), finely chopped
3/4 cup olive oil
Combine the shallot and lemon juice in a medium bowl and season with salt and pepper. Let it sit for 5 minutes or so (this slightly pickles the shallot and takes a bit of the oniony edge off). Stir in the herbs and oil, and season again with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, if needed.The best bit about making salsa verde is having leftover salsa verde. We had ours on top of pan grilled chicken thighs, marinated in nothing more than olive oil, salt and pepper, and with a generous spoonful of rice, shredded carrot and lemon salad and a handful of green leaves on the side.
How to cook rice! The only instructions you need!
If My Food Bag has taught me anything, it’s how to cook rice. Put 150g of rice in a pot. Pour over 1 cup + 2 tablespoons of boiling water from a kettle. Put a lid on the pot and set the pot on an element over low heat. Bring to the boil. Lower the heat to the lowest possible heat – though you should have it on low already – and leave with the lid on for 12 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the pot from the element, keep the lid on and leave to sit for another 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork. Easy peasy. Just don’t forget to salt the water (as I did in giving those instructions, or “destructions” as my grandmother would’ve called them).
Inside BBQs
One thing you don’t do a lot of when you live in an apartment, and in Wellington full stop, is barbeque. When you do barbeque you often end up eating indoors. That happened at an early February barbeque at our friends’ place. We perched where we could around their wee dining room table and kitchen counter and ate BBQed Filipino pork kebabs and Blackball sausages and potato salad from paper plates that sat in little wicker basket plate holders that my friend Gary’s mum always brings out for barbeques.
Generally speaking I take on two roles at barbeques: provider of sausages and provider of salad because I live across the road from Moore Wilson’s, and Moore Wilson’s sausages are generally better than what you can get in the supermarket (although supermarket sausage offerings have improved in recent years). I’m a salad provider because I suppose people generally think I’m okay at cooking. For this barbeque I made a tomato salad that was perhaps better described as “lashings of tahini yoghurt topped with some tomatoes and crispy capers.” The capers were more soggy than crispy, if I’m honest, but they were delicious. The salad was a hit. I guess they’ll keep me on.
Lentils and fish curry
A break from My Food Bag for a week meant trotting out some old favourites – Alison Roman’s lemony and garlicky lentils, which she calls gentle lentils, and Rick Stein’s Sri Lankan fish khatta, which is delicious, and best of all generates enough leftovers for the next day, but not so many that the curry alone is sufficient: you have to order in some prawn biryani from Great India to make it a meal suitable for gluttons and especially if you know how to cook the perfect quantity of rice for two and don’t end up with Rice Mountain leftover. This is now me.
The gentle lentils were good with rice, a big dollop of Zany Zeus yoghurt and a little salad of tender green beans and quick pickled red onion dressed in a lemony cumin dressing.
I’m less sure about the name “gentle lentils”. I’m quite prone to getting a sore tummy after lentils, which Google tells me is reasonably common, but is probably a level of detail you didn’t need.
Running commentary: Eating at The Beijing
Of course we ate at The Beijing in February. Once on our own, once with my Ma and Pa. When we went with Ma and Pa, Geoff regaled us with stories about how his father’s favourite dish at Chinese restaurants was the egg fu yong though Bob called it egg few yong. This is the man who up until the day he died was convinced that her name was Princess Diane. Le Zhong’s egg fu yong is excellent and egg fu yong is something worth ordering more regularly than you most likely do (you probably never order it).
The night we went with Mum and Dad I debated with Phillip whether we needed to order shrimp fried rice with our selection of main dishes or whether plain rice would be an “elegant sufficiency.” In the end I was told by everyone, Phil included, that it was my decision. In no great surprise to anyone I went with the shrimp fried.
50000kg of peas
When you subscribe to My Food Bag you find that at certain points in the year you have a glut of frozen peas in your freezer. While most of the ingredients you’re sent are portion controlled, peas are not. Need half a cup of peas? Here, have 500g.
My go-to dish for using up peas is Rachel Roddy’s excellent risi e bisi, a dish I’ve cooked so many times that the page of the recipe book is now all crinkled with dried up butter and chicken stock stains. Risi e bisi is fine as is, but it’s especially good if you throw a sausage on top, preferably an ever-so-slightly-burned one, which I think is the best kind of sausage.
My friend Gary likes this dinner so much that we now call it Gary’s Dinner.
It’s a very good dinner for feeding a small or a large crowd, especially if you buy the Sixes and Sevens coconut, cherry and chocolate tart from Moore Wilson’s to have afterwards (ants got the rhubarb and strawberry one that Nicky and Gary initially bought).
Public Service Announcement
Wattie’s Black Doris Plums are back on the shelves. They’re now over $8 a tin, but that’s the price you pay for the privilege.
A conundrum
What do people think about pre-dinner cheese? I’ve always been a post-dinner cheese person. Perhaps that’s due to my penchant for savoury desserts over sweet ones, but I’ve also always been told that cheese after dinner is the “done thing” and the “French thing.” After dinner cheese is always what my parents have done, and I guess you learn all of your tricks from them. Usually, the only cheese I eat before dinner is a pre-sliced piece of gouda broken into two, shoved on top of a couple of dry crackers to stave off a pre-dinner hunger-induced meltdown. I am prone to gorging on cheese, so I worry that eating cheese before dinner will, as they say, spoil my dinner. But then, gorging cheese is gorging cheese regardless of the point at which you do it during a meal.
Things I’ve been reminded this month
Crumbed fish is very delicious. It’s particularly delicious with rice and a slaw bulked out with broccoli. Fish katsu bowls if you will.
The chicken nasi lemak at The Long Bar on Brandon Street is good and quick for before the cricket. Don’t muck around with anything else on the menu. They’re prone to forgetting anything other than the nasi lemak.
Must make homemade pizza more often.
A Coke mini is all I ever need (250ml). 330ml is far too much.
I am very bad at saying I’m having alcohol free days and then not.