five things

 

1. Apple Tarte Tatain. I don’t know how I went 23 years without realising how amazing apple tarte tatain was. Perhaps because working with sugar has always seemed daunting, or the fear that it wouldn’t turn out? But with the help of my shiny new tarte tatain pan it turns out that it was actually one of the easiest desserts I’ve ever made and oh sweet jesus it was delicious. Caramalised sugars, sweet short crust pastry and soft, burnished apples? More please.

2. Cambridge Satchel Company. I’ve recently been lucky enough to visit Melbourne, my first visit back since I moved away at the end of last year, and while I was there I picked up this gorgeous bag. I’ve coveted this neon pink satchel bag for at least two years and finally have made it my own. For someone who’s a little afraid of wearing colour this is an easy way to take a big step out of black. Also just wearing it makes me happy – so that must make it worth the… admittedly slightly steep (possibly not to most people but I’m cheap) pricetag.

3.Tiny Protesters. You have not seen cute until you have heard a two year old in a princess dress say ‘suv-bert the pat-rickardy’ (translation: subvert the patriarchy) as she marches with her momma in the Christchurch chapter of the Slutwalk.

4. Chloe Moretz and Hick. Possibly the only good thing about being sick – at this point I’m still on the urgent waiting list for surgery, but am getting increasingly sick; thus my lack of motivation to post and/or cook lately) – is getting to watch all the movies I want without feeling guilty. Hick is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, I’ve heard complaints of a slow moving plot or a plot that just doesn’t make sense; but personally I love it and have watched it three times in as many days.

5. Orange Lipstick. I’ve always loved a bold lip when doing my makeup and this Stila Long Wear Lip Colour  is a fantastic combination of long-lasting and not-too-harsh on my lips… and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s neon orange. The Stila long wear colour range is hands down my favourite brand of lipstick, as long as you plan to be wearing lips that colour for at least four or five hours. The colour works well with pale, winter skin and is fantastic if you don’t want to do anything elaborate with your make up. A swathe of lip colour, a little mascara and a top-knot and you’re good to go.

Mulled Wine Spiced Quinces

I can admit it, I’m not ashamed. I used to be scared of quinces. Not scared as in I’d cross to the other side of the street if I saw them walking up to me in a darkened street – but definitely scared of cooking them. They always seemed like so much work to take them from a beautiful but inedible fruit to something that you can actually eat. However, like most people I tend to shop with my eyes. So when I saw a kilo bag of quinces all yellow and bashful, shining prettily at me from their bags… well I was done. Three dollars later and I there I was walking through the farmers market thinking ‘oh jesus why did I do this? What am I going to do with these?’ A week later and they were still sitting in my fridge, balefully staring at me and silently asking ‘why haven’t you cooked us yet?’ I didn’t know how to tell them that I was scared of them, unsure about how to cook them and whether they’d be worth the effort.

They are totally worth the effort. After some research I decided that the best way to cook them would be a long, slow cooking filled with warming spices like nutmeg, cinnamon and anise. My options seemed to be fairly limited methodwise, most people seemed to advocate either roasting or poaching it. But I needed both my stove and my oven for other things, and couldn’t devote six hours to just tending to quince, no matter how lovely they might be.

A slow cooker was the answer. My favourite thing in winter is to throw some meat and vegetables in the slow cooker in the morning and then to come home from a cold, dark day to a room stewing in the juices of a delicious meal requiring approximately no effort from me. I figured that surely it would work in a similar way with the quince. And my god did it work. The quinces were transformed from hard and intensely sour flesh coloured fruit to a deep, flirtatious pink that tastes like the best mulled wine and sweet roses, with a texture that is indescribable but feels something like velvet in your mouth in the best possible way. You can use the quinces in so many different ways, whether on your morning oatmeal or as a dessert by themselves; you can cut the cooked fruit into tiny pieces and use to make a membrillo cake or make a clafoutis.

I ate them mostly as part of my breakfast, either with yoghurt and granola or porridge, but I’ve also used the syrup to make a quince cocktail with gin, lemon and soda water. Once you’ve tasted them, trust me – you’ll find ways to sneak them into everything. And just as a side bonus, your house will smell amazing for the next few days after you cook them.

Mulled Wine Spiced Quinces

1 kilo of quinces
3 cups water
2 cups caster sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
5 cloves
6 whole allspice berries
2 whole star anise
1/2 tsp ground mixed spice
Juice of 1 1/2 lemons

Quinces tends to oxidise (turn brown) quickly once it’s peeled so it’s important to have a bowl of water into which the juice of a lemon has been added, also known as acidulated water. Peel the quince, cut into quarters and remove the core. Pop the prepared quince into the acidulated water and repeat until all the quince is prepared.

Put the quince in the slow cooker and cover with water and sugar. Add the spices and the remaining half of lemon to the slow cooker and stir to dissolve the sugar. Turn the slow cooker onto high and let cook for an hour, stirring occasionally and then turn the heat down to low. At this point you can cook the quinces as long as you like, the longer you cook them for the deeper in colour and flavour that they will turn. To get mine to the deep, ruby red that you see in the pictures I cooked them for about five hours total, however you can either cook them longer or shorter than that depending on time constraints.

Once cooked to your liking, ladle the quinces into a sterilized jar and top with the quince syrup. If you have syrup remaining you can bottle it – it makes a delicious cocktail qith a little gin and tonic. Get inventive with it, the syrup is so delicious it’s a waste just to throw it out.

Autumn Food Festival

I try to get to the Christchurch Farmer’s Market most weekends, and it’s always one of the things I most enjoy taking any visitors to Christchurch to when I play tour guide. It’s a bit of a ritual for my Saturdays to drag myself out of bed when the sun is barely hot yet, pull on the clothes closest to me and head out to Riccarton. As you can possibly tell from below… though I may appear fully dressed and physically awake: it’s mostly a combination of luck and semi-coherant mumbling that gets me out of the house fully decent in the mornings.

I always get my breakfast and usually a coffee there – whether that breakfast comes in the form of fresh juice, pancakes, a intensely decadent hot chocolate… or… more usually just from nibbling at free samples, depends on the week. This weekend I was lucky enough to catch the Autumn Food Festival, which meant that the market was even more packed than usual and full of cooking demonstrations, candy apples and a whole crop of new stalls.

My favourite new addition was Gretchen’s Bakery. Among other things, she was selling the most delicious array of scones my eyes have ever set upon. While I eventually settled on a sundried tomato and feta and a cinnamon chip; I know I’d have been equally satisfied with the pumpkin pie, tripple chocolate, maple walnut or blueberry flavours. These scones were a revelation: both incredibly decadent and strong on flavour (who knew that cinnamon chips were a thing? Where can I get a hundred bags or them to stuff in my mouth?), but also light enough that you don’t hate yourself afterwards. And it must be said that Gretchen herself is incredibly lovely, she told me she started cooking when she moved to New Zealand and realised you couldn’t buy pumpkin pie in a can, so she just learnt to make them herself. I was totally won over by her and her baking, definitely a new favourite.

Equally exciting was the long awaited return of Posh Porridge! In the summer months, Posh Porridge transforms into Posh Pancakes, and while I’m sure that their pancakes would be delicious, it’s the creamy bite of the slow cooked, steel cut oats that I crave.

Look at that! The combination of fresh banana, toasted almonds and toffee sauce is completely mind-blowing. It might seem like they would be too rich and overwhelm the porridge, but the girls seem to know exactly how much of to give you so you’ll get a mouthfull of flavour in each bite but not get a sugar headache. The only bad thing about Posh Porridge is that it tends to sell out fast, the Farmers Market opens at nine and last weekend they were sold out by eleven. For the record, the porridge doesn’t come drowning in soy milk as the picture might lead you to believe – that’s just my personal preference.

You can take your pick of fresh vegetable stands. I don’t have one particular favourite stand, I tend to pick and choose from what looks good to me each week. But looking at those purple cauliflowers and bright orange carrots I can’t help thinking about roasted cauliflowers and carrots with honey and dukkah rub… I have a feeling I know what I’ll be getting next weekend. It’s all really reasonably priced as well, so poor students have no excuse. when a butternut squash costs 50 cents, you are almost obligated to buy it. And as for the abundance of late season berries? Forget about it. I found myself walking away with a punnet of raspberries before I’d even really realised what I was doing. Sweet, juicy and amazing.

Nikau Breads are far and away the most delicious bread at the market. I have been known to fight people for the last slice of honey and flaxseed bread, and their brioche’s are perfect for raspberry and lemon brioche pudding.

Sugar Baby Cakery has been around for awhile now, but I’ve only recently noticed how just plain cute their baking is. I also love that they move away from standards such as vanilla and chocolate and instead make flavours like “Tutti Frutti.” As well as cupcakes they’re your ladies for cake pops, spice biscuits and cakes-in-jars, and as if keeping me fantasising about buttercream wasn’t enough they also cater parties, weddings and are opening a shop later this year. If you’re looking for fun, beautiful baking – definitely go to Sugar Baby.

As part of the Autumn Food Festival Mr Johnny Schwass himself was in attendance with his Gorilla Go Go – Charcoal Relief Unit, serving up what was agreed were the best charcoal lamb and rocket tacos in the business. A little bit of a Christchurch legend, Johnny owns Gorilla, among other projects, which is one of my favourite restaurants in town. It’s menu is always changing, I don’t think I’ve ever been there yet and seen the menu in exactly the same incarnation as it was the last time. However staples such as the Dripping Potatoes, Mushroom Arancini balls and anything from their charcoal menu are always worth ordering. And by worth ordering – I mean that those potatoes will change your life. If it were possible, I would make those potatoes my wife.

The best cake fullstop.

I know you’re probably thinking “hmph, that cake looks good , but I’ve seen better.” To which I say… you don’t know! And that this cake is very, very good. Out of everything I bake, this is the one cake my family always asks for again and again; it is the standard by which other cakes are all held. It’s deliciously moist, morish and for all of you who worry about that sort of thing, yes it’s gluten free. And have I mentioned that you can pull the batter together in less time than it takes to preheat the oven to bake it? As I type, I can almost hear the pieces of it that have survived the night, sitting in the cake stand, calling my name. They want me to eat them… but I cannot. Sadly, food has turned against me in the last few days and eating anything other than steamed vegetables, wholegrain rice and steamed fish leads to horrible, crippling pain that makes me want to have a little cry. So while I wait for an ultrasound, I just make cake for others and watch them eat them. Which is sort of my idea of hell?

At this point… I suppose you are wondering what flavour it is, right? Well… imagine nutella in cake form. Hazelnut cake with dark chocolate frangelico ganache. Just typing that makes my mouth water a little bit. This cake is so rich and moist that you only need a very small slice (though lets be honest… you’re welcome to have a big slice if you want one. And with this cake; you want one), and there’s no need for cream or anything along those lines. As a bonus this little baby will stay moist and morish for days, unlike a lot of cakes that I find tend to dry out overnight.

The ganache as well is a bit of a miracle. I don’t know why I had never before considered adding frangelico to dark chocolate ganache – it all makes sense. Grown up, alcoholic nutella that you can put on top of a cake? It’s all there, smugly grinning at you as if to say ‘girl, what took you so long? I am delicious and I have been waiting for you.’ If… for some reason you don’t like the idea of chocolate and frangelico on your hazelnut cake, you could instead top the cake with cinnamon poached apples (which by the way make a delicious accompaniment in any fashion to almost all foods), but I think if you’re going to eat what is basically nutella cake… well then really commit to it.

As a wee bonus for you all, here is what my life has become all about. Steamed eggplant and mushrooms with wholegrain rice. Theoretically tasty… but in all honesty it turns out that steamed vegetables rely pretty heavily on an ability to season them with salt, pepper, garlic… really anything.

Gluten Free Hazelnut Cake with Frangelico Ganache

150g hazelnut meal
150g almond meal
1 1/2 cups of muscovado/ dark brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence/ 1 tsp vanilla paste
250g softened butter

100g dark chocolate
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 shots of frangelico

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius. Combine the hazelnut meal, almond meal and sugar in a bowl. In a mixer, beat the eggs and vanilla together, and then add the butter. Beat for three minutes and then add the dry ingredients to the mixture and beat for five minutes. Pour into a greased 20cm rount cake tine and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean and the cake is pulling away from the sides. After 20-30 minutes of baking you will want to cover the top of the cake with silver foil to stop it from getting too dark.

Chop the dark chocolate into small pieces and heat cream to just below boiling. Pour cream and frangelico over the chopped chocolate in a bowl and stir until incorporated and a ganache forms. Let the ganache cool for two to three minutes before adding to the cake. Let the cake cool completely before attempting to ice the cake with the ganache, otherwise the ganache will simply drip off.

five things

1. Dark Purple Lipstick. Mac is still my favourite makeup, no matter how many of their products I buy, I’m always happy with them. My favourite time to wear this dark puple, almost black lipstick is in the middle of a bright, sunny day with a button up chambrey shirt and high waisted skirt. I always love contrast, and goth lipstick + preppy outfit just makes me happy. It’s also really long lasting which I love, and is almost completely matt. If you’re interested it can be found here, the colour is ‘faithfully yours.’

2. j’aime les macarons. The best (and okay only to my knowledge) macaron shop in all of christchurch, j’aime les macarons are unfailingly delicious, moreish and come in such adorable packaging it’s almost worth it to buy a 12 pack just for the box. My favourite is always salted buttercream (top), but their seasonal treats such as the milk chocolate and mandarin (below) are always worth a try as well. My favourite indulgence on a Saturday afternoon.

3. Smoking Slippers. These shoes… I am obsessed with these shoes. More fun than your standard ballet flats, smoking slippers are apparently the new big thing. And as always, I am obsessed with anything even vaguely leopard print. Mostly I wear fairly plain shoes, preferring to make my fashion statements in the rest of my outfit, but these somehow go with nearly everything I own. I’ve already had them resoled twice, and I’m pretty sure I will just keep wearing them until they fall completely apart.

4. Cherry Blossom Tea. I don’t know who Mr Harney or his sons are, but they make a damn fine cup of tea. Even if we ignore that Harney & Sons tea comes in gorgeous, classic tins that are worth display on any kitchen table – the tea itself is delicious. I love cherry blossom, a green tea with a faint cherry flavour and strong cherry scent; but every single one of the unusual and uncommon flavours of tea looks amazing. I’ll next be trying ‘Paris’, or maybe ‘Rose Scented’. Added bonus, for anyone new to tea, Harney & Sons tea all comes with a flavour profile, brewing instructions and the proper water temperature on the side of the tin.

5. Sunflowers. I inherited my love for flowers from my mother who most prefers white lillies, but I am a girl who loves colour. Sunflowers are some of my favourites, whenever I see them they just seem to glow at me, sunnily begging me to take them home and put them in a pretty vase and love them. So… I do. I am powerless against sunflowers, there is no other excuse.

Red Velvet

There’s something fascinating to me about the idea of red velvet cake. It might be the fact that most baking seems to fall within a pretty predictable colour palette, or maybe the mystery of ‘what does it taste like? RED? Does it taste like red!?” (For the record, it does not taste like red. But it does taste like amazing)

Either way, lately I’ve been feeling a little bit blah, and a lot like doing some baking. I might have discussed before how baking is very much like therapy for me, but the combination of viciously cracking eggs, whisking and the repetitive, nearly mindless tasks of measuring and pouring are extremely cathartic for me. So when I felt blah this morning, and it just so happened that we had some leftover buttermilk from last week’s banana cupcakes, I thought that maybe the time had finally come to experience red velvet cake in reality and not just through a computer screen.

Of course, immediately on looking up recipes I realised that my family doesn’t really eat a lot of cakes. Most nights we sit down to eat together, but we usually save dessert for special occasions or 11pm cravings for something sweet. What we do like however, are 5pm snacks. So turning the red velvet cake into little cupcakes that could be eaten on the fly (with a sneaky glass of wine) after getting home from work was the logical choice.

The recipe I ultimately settled on is from Ming Makes Cupcakes, and we love her. I have yet to try one of her recipes that hasn’t been delicious – if you’re looking for a reliable cupcake recipe she has 30 of the best all neatly situated on one website. My favourite thing was the frosting. Instead of what seems to be standard cream cheese frosting, the recipe calls for a vanilla almond buttercream and in all seriousness… I could just put my face in the bowl and lick. It is amazing. If you don’t like almond essence then you could substitute for just vanilla buttercream or even cream cheese frosting, but I really think that the almond plays off the only just there kiss of cocoa powder and the tiny hint of sourness from the buttermilk so that it all melds together to be better than the parts alone.

After trying them, I can definitely say that these are the best cupcakes I have ever made or eaten. They’re light, moist, sweet but not cloying, ever-so-faintly chocolately and have a hint of floral coming from the almost extract. My mother, who is not really a sweets woman, loved these so much that she sneakily ate three in a row while we watched The Help. It took pretty much all of my willpower not to do the same. So possibly the only bad thing about these delicious little morsels is that they’re dangerous for your willpower.

I couldn’t resist… while I was photographing I had to have a bite

And then… another one

And then suddenly it was all gone.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Vanilla Almond Buttercream

1  1/4 cup flour
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 T cocoa powder
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 T red food colouring
1/2 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp vanilla paste

Preheat the oven to 180 c fan bake and line a cupcake or muffin tray with cupcake liners. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder. In a seperate bowl, whisk together the oil, buttermilk, egg, food colouring, vinegar and vanilla paste. While mixing the wet ingrediants at a medium speed – gradually add in the dry mixture until combined.

Fill the cupcake liners 2/3 of the way up and bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted. Let the cupcakes cool on a baking rack – if you want to hurry things up you can put them in the freezer for twenty minutes, but I prefer the texture of the cupcakes if you let them cool completely at air temperature.

Icing

1/2 cup room temperature butter
2 1/2 cups icing sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
a dash of almond extract

Beat the butter and sugar together until smooth. Add the milk, vanilla and almond extract and beat until at a spreadable consistency. If needed you can add more sugar. I prefer to refrigerate the icing while the cupcakes cool so that it’s a little easier to play with while icing.

Comfort Food for Grown Ups

Sorry about the lack of posting lately – I’ve been nursing a cold, a couple of pinched nerves in my back and a popped rib. So needless to say, I’ve been craving comfort food. When we talk comfort food it’s different for everyone. For some people it might be a steaming bowl of macaroni and cheese, some others might think of pot roast, still others might be imagining their grandma’s chicken and dumplings. The one thing that most of them have in common is that they’re easy-to-eat, easy-to-digest food that’s rich in calories, nutrients or both. For me it’s ever changing; when I’m stressed I want to test out new recipes, I’m always searching for something new. But this week I had a very specific craving. My back was sore, I was tired and I wanted fast, sweet and indulgent.

What I really wanted, I decided, was chocolate chip cookies. But if I was going to have chocolate chip cookies then I wanted the best possible chocolate chip cookies. My standard recipe for cookies is my mothers and is perfectly good – studded with milk chocolate chips, they’re crunchy and have a very subtle background of vanilla. But this time I chose a dough that would give me soft, pillowy cookies, used the best dark chocolate cut into shards and cut the flour with ground hazelnut. People who follow the blog regularly have probably noticed that I have a real thing about hazelnuts – I just love how sweet and moreish they are. I also used dark, muscovado sugar in place of brown sugar which made them taste faintly of molasses and just gave them a more complex flavour.

The finished cookies were everything I wanted – soft, nostalgic but unmistakably a grown up version of a children’s treat. They’re perfect with a glass of milk, but also with your morning coffee or sandwiching those batches of homemade ice-cream I know you’re all out there making. This recipe makes a fairly large batch, you can either bake the entire batch in one go and just quietly nom down on them pretending that because you feel sick they aren’t really bad for you like I did – or you can roll the dough into logs and freeze it, ready to pull out whenever you have a cookie emergency.

 

Dark Chocolate and Hazelnut Chip Cookies
recipe adapted from saveur.com

1 ⅛ cups white all-purpose flour
1 cup ground hazelnuts
½ tsp. sea salt
½ tsp. baking soda
12 tbsp. unsalted butter
1 ½ cup dark muscovado sugar, packed
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
½ tsp. vanilla paste
2 cups dark chocolate, chopped into shards

Preheat the oven to 180°. In a medium mixing bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking soda, then stir through the ground hazelnuts. In a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until thoroughly blended. Add egg, egg yolk, and vanilla, and mix to incorporate. Add dry ingredients to the bowl with the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Gently fold in chocolate shards. Divide dough into largeish walnut sized chunks and roll into balls, transfer to parchment-lined cookie sheets, about 9 cookies per sheet. If you want to freeze some of the mixture, roll into short logs and wrap in glad wrap before freezing. This will make them easier to slice later. Bake for about 15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. When fully cooked, the outer edges of the cookies should be golden and slightly crisp, while the middle should still be slightly soft.

Mexi-fake Cooking

 

As a student, and really just as a person in this economy, I think it’s important that we recycle. As someone who constantly makes more food than she can actually eat (I have chronic eyes-bigger-than-my-stomach disorder) I think it’s particularly important to recycle our food. For me, a delicious dinner is like a one night stand. No matter how sexy and delicious it might have been for one night, seeing it in the harsh florescent light of a fridge the next morning – it never looks as appealing.

The antidote to this is to use these old ingredients to make a new dish. Last night we celebrated the return of my family all to one time-zone with a rolled shoulder of lamb roasted in star anise and fennel seeds. Fresh from the oven it was mouth-wateringly tender, succulent and moreish; but this morning the juices had congealed and the meat was looking sad and dry.

Loath to throw anything out, no matter how grim the situation, and as always craving Mexican, I decided lamb carnitas were in order. I can’t make any claims as to the authenticity to my version of the classic dish, but I can make some pretty impressive boasts about the fact that each and every family member went back for seconds and thirds. I flavoured it with guacamole in mind, and after not finding any online consensus about what seasonings I should be using: went with my gut. Coriander, cinnamon, cumin, chilli and paprika, all simmered in a rich braising liquid of orange juice and chicken stock. Sound a little like an odd combination? Trust me, it works. The acidity of the orange juice cuts through the richness of the meat and the sweetness of the cinnamon plays off of the chilli in the lamb. It’s all about balance.

The meat is meltingly tender and reminiscent of pulled pork. Add a little smashed avocado and tomato salsa (my personal favourite way of making salsa is simply to dice cherry tomatoes, season heavily with salt and pepper and then douse in vinegar) and wrap it all up in a tortilla and you have dinner sorted.I’ve also included instructions for making this recipe if not using leftovers, it’s pretty much the same recipe just make sure you brown the meat off first and you’ll need to cook for a little while longer to achieve the same tenderness.

I decided to make mini flour tortillas as well, just the size of my palm so that you could pick the tacos up in your hand. I’ve always been on the mind that many small bites beat a few big ones, and the mini tortillas let you play with your combinations so much more than having one big taco. There’s a secret conspiracy that you need a tortilla press in order to make homemade tortillas, but that is a lie. Use a cast iron skillet or a rolling pin; you can really use anything with a flat bottomed surface to press the tortillas flat. Don’t stress about them being perfectly round – you made your own tortillas! That is impressive enough.

 

 

Lamb Carnitas

600 grams lamb shoulder
1 large white onion
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground chilli powder
¼ cup orange juice
¼ cup low sodium chicken stock

Slice the onion and fry off in a sauté pan over a low heat until translucent  but not browned. If you’re using leftover meat, chop it roughly and add to the pan. If using uncooked meat, remove the onions from the pan; dice the lamb into small cubes and brown the meat before adding the onions back to the pan.

Bring the heat up to a high heat, add the spices and season to taste. Quickly stir the meat and onions so that they are coated in the spices and cook for three minutes while stirring. If the meat or onions begin to stick you can deglaze the pan with a little of the chicken stock, this will help loosen them up as well as adding flavour. After three minutes add the orange juice and chicken stock and bring to the boil. As soon as the liquids boil bring the heat down to the lowest possible so that it is just barely simmering. Put a lid on the pan and leave to cook for a minimum of three hours, adding more stock as necessary when the liquid absorbs.

If you aren’t starting from leftovers it will take longer for the meat to tenderise, I’d recommend letting it cook for at least four or five hours and once cooked use a pair of forks to pull the meat apart.

 

Flour Tortillas

2 cups flour
1/4 cup cold butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup warm water

Using the back of fork, mix the flour, baking power, salt and butter in a bowl until it starts to look like coarse breadcrumbs.  Slowly add the water while continually mixing the dough – depending on how absorbant your flour is you may need more of less water to form a soft dough. Knead for 5 minutes. Separate into 12 golf ball sized balls for small tortillas and 6 balls for large tortillas. Heat a skillet or flat bottomed frying pan.

Roll the tortillas out between two pieces of baking powder until very thin, they will puff up during cooking or alternately use the bottom of a flat bottomed bowl to press the tortillas down into shape.

Cook the tortillas on the hot skilled on each side for about 1 minute. If it puffs up at all, you can poke a hole in the puffed area to release the steam. Cook it until it is no longer doughy and browned in patches. Place onto a plate covered by a towel to keep warm until you’re ready to use them.

five things

1. Lemon Drizzle Cake. One of my favourite treats from the Riccarton Farmers Market. There’s nothing like a leisurely morning spent debating whether I want golden or purple beetroot this week and then coming home to a slice of this delicious, barely sweet cake for afternoon tea.

2. Dogs. Meet Bordeaux, the fluffiest, largest dog in the world. I spent Sunday at a going-away party for a friend and Bordeaux was the secret guest of honour. I spent the majority of the evening just staring at him slack jawed and wondering how a dog who came up to my waist could possibly be so gentle and friendly.

3. Tea by the fire.My mother’s solution to all of life’s problems is to sit down and “have a nice cup of tea.” That phrase has become synonymous to me with relaxing and taking a moment to reflect on my often hectic day, and there’s something so luxurious about curling up by a warm fire on a cold night and sipping hot, strong tea.

4. Dinner dates with my sister. My older sister and I took a night to catch up together and head out to celebrate my acceptance to Grad School with pizza. We don’t often get to spend quality time together so it’s lovely when we get alone time, especially while eating this (rather inauthentic) antipasto pizza covered in artichokes, cubes of eggplant, sour capers, salty olives and delicious mozzarella.

5. Weeknight movies. I love going to the movies on a Monday night when most people are at home and I get the theatre to myself. I have a massively oversized poncho that I always wear to the movies and use as a blanket, and curling up on the plush seats and letting my mind drift is one of my favourite secret pleasures.

Ice Cream, You Scream

Funnily enough, the best Christmas present I got this year wasn’t actually something I was given, instead it was something I gave to someone else. This present was a long time in the making, for some years my father has wanted an ice cream maker.  Now my father is a good man, a good man who loves food and is a very adventurous, exciting person to eat with. He’s also someone who loves to collect kitchen gadgets, if it’s shiny and goes in the kitchen he thinks it would be a good thing to have. What he is not however, is a man who cooks. So whenever he brought it up this desire to acquire an ice cream maker we would have the following conversation:

“I’d love an ice cream machine”

“But you’ll never use it. I’ll use it. You will never use it.”

“Yes I will; I’d love to make my own ice cream.”

This is a conversation that had been going on for years. So finally this year, my sisters and I got together to make his dream a reality. Purchased in secret and hidden away until Christmas, when he finally opened it we made him promise that he would use it, and that it wouldn’t sit undisturbed in the box for years like his pasta machine. So it was dutifully unpacked, and recipes were researched, and shining and happy, our brand new Cuisineart Ice Cream maker joined the bench along with our other gadgets.

Guess what?

It’s nearly March now and as anticipated, he hasn’t used it. I’ve used it. He has never used it.

But I don’t care because oh how I have used it. I had no idea that these babies were so much fun. I started out small, making strawberry and framboise ice cream, but soon after that things started getting weird. I have a list of flavours waiting to be made that includes but isn’t limited to:

• Chocolate and rosemary
• Lavender shortbread
• Brown butter
• Gin and tonic sorbet

I’ve limited myself to making two batches a month maximum because honestly, otherwise I would be eating ice cream for every meal and pretty soon things would spiral out of control. Out of my experiments so far, I’ve had two particularly successful flavours.

The first has been my hazelnut caramel ice cream (you might remember it from my five things teaser). This is the ultimate in rich indulgence. Thick, vanilla ice cream with ground hazelnuts blended in with a swirl of hazelnut caramel that is just the right combination of sweet, nutty and savoury to stop things from being too overwhelming. If there is any ice cream that is perfect for winter after a meal of slow braised oxtail, this is the ice cream. Yes, the recipe is a little complicated – but in all honesty it’s not that complex. It’s more just a matter of following step by step instructions that are all by themselves quite simple.

The other is the polar opposite. Matcha ice cream is just barely sweet with a strong green tea flavour that resonates throughout the palate. It’s a lot lighter than the hazelnut caramel and is a great dessert to eat on a hot day when the idea of anything too cloyingly sweet seems like too much to handle.  It has a very complex flavour that really tastes of the matcha powder, so if you don’t like matcha you might not like this much. On the other hand, if you do then you will love this. Plus it has an added bonus of being the much simpler of the two recipes.

 

Hazelnut Caramel Ice Cream

1 cup full cream milk
2 cups  cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
5 large egg yolks
1/2 cup ground, roasted hazelnuts

1/2 cup ground hazelnuts
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons butter or margarine, cut into chunks
1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup hazelnut-flavor liqueur (eg frangellico)

First heat the milk, cream, and sugar in a large saucepan until just barely boiling. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the milk and  then add the bean pod to the milk as well. Bring the temperature down to just simering and leave for five minutes. Remove from the heat, and let the flavours infuse for one hour.

In a separate bowl, stir together the egg yolks. Rewarm the cream mixture and gradually pour 1/2 cup of the milk into the yolks, whisking constantly as you pour. Pour the warmed yolks and milk back into the saucepan. Cook over the custard over a low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom to bring up the vanilla seeds, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula. If you have a food thermometer you want to be aiming for about 170 degrees c. If your mixture gets too hot it will begin to scramble, but don’t panic! Just quickly take it off the heat and strain it a few times through a sieve before you put it in the ice bath.

Strain the custard into your ice bath. Stir over the ice until cool and then refrigerate to chill thoroughly. Once completely cool, mix in the ground hazelnuts, freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The ground hazelnuts will give the ice cream a slightly grainy texture, so don’t worry if you find your ice cream isn’t completely smooth as that’s to be expected.

To make the hazelnut caramel, in a medium sized saucepan combine the sugar and the butter. Shake the pan frequently to mix the sugar and butter, but do not stir it as this might cause it to sieze. When the sugar and butter are melted together completely and have turned a dark amber colour remove from the heat. Make sure you watch carefully because sugar can go from not dark enough to completely burnt in seconds.

Once off the heat add the cream, ground hazelnuts and liqeur and mix until the caramel is smooth. Return it to the heat and stir until it boils vigorously and then bring back off the hook. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate until it has cooled and thickened.

Once the ice cream has churned and the hazelnut caramel has cooled, swirl the caramel through the churned ice cream and transfer into a container and freeze for at least three hours. Check occasionally to make sure the caramel hasn’t sunk to the bottom, if it has – mix with a spoon.

Matcha Ice Cream
This recipe is adapted from Manu’s Menu

2 cups of cream
½ cup sugar
3 tbsp Matcha (100% natural green tea powder)
1 pinch of salt

Put the cream, sugar and salt into a medium sized sauce pot until it comes to a full boil. Keep whisking until it starts to bubble, then remove it from the heat and whisk in the matcha powder.

Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and let it cool down until completely chilled over an ice bath.

Churn for 20-25 minutes in an ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions and then transfer into a container and freeze for at least 3 hours before serving.