Su-gah

I have what I suspect to be a sugar hangover. Granted, I was drinking the night before, but not enough to warrant feeling this lousy. And it’s a different sort of lousy than your usual “my guts are churning my head is throbbing” type that is the aftermath of a serious night on the juice. This sort of lousy is – well, just gross. In fact it’s possibly worse than the R18 variety. This is serious R8 stuff, the last time I remember having a sugar hangover was after one of the regular pre-teen sweet laden sleepovers we used to have.

My sugar hangover arose from a night on the town with the girls (grown up now). After a bottle of champagne or two my stomach and I realised I had missed dinner, so we grabbed an emergency bubble tea. For those of you who haven’t discovered bubble tea yet, it is a must try for anyone interested in a strange Asian textural experience. Now the problem with bubble tea – or should I say the brilliance – is the cup sizing in that the end comes too soon, leaving you wanting more. So after a few more bars I found myself wandering home past the bubble tea shop again. And so again I went in. They looked at me very strangely in there, having seen me just a few brief hours earlier. The second bubble tea never tastes as good as the first, and halfway through the second you are feeling slightly ill, the precious pearls at the bottom have lost their lustre and are not nearly as precious or appetising as they used to be. By the time you get three quarters down you’re battling, the pearls reveal themselves as the stodgy mess they are, and the sweet milky flavour cloys the throat.

Feeling full of regret I sodded off to bed, only to wake this morning with more feelings of regret – in my head, gut, and depleted energy levels. I feel like a limp carrot – you know the one that’s in the back of your vegetable drawer? My skin is much like a limp carrot too, grey, dry and slightly wrinkly on the surface. Fast tracking my memory back I try to recount how I coped in those pre-teen days. I seem to recall that the “day after” was always spent much like it is these adult days, flat on my back on the couch recovering. While couches are lovely, I have decided a detox will be instigated to flush my poor body from those sugary bubble tea toxins – vegetables, fruit and herbal tea will be the order of the day, and lots and lots of water. I’m definitely not about to overdose on sugar again in a hurry, I’ll stick to the other hangovers thanks.


Image from agapetea

Oh, for Christmas' Sake!

The people of this world can be divided up by those who can roll their tongues, and those who cannot. (There are also those anomalies that have no tongue, though I suppose they would fall into the “can’t roll their tongue” category). Likewise, there are also those jovial folk who “do” Christmas, and the grinches who despise it. I sadly fall into the latter of both categories - hours of my childhood were wasted before the mirror, forcing my tongue into all imaginable shapes with my fingers before realising I was one of the condemned, born without an acrobatic oral muscle. While I may have given up on the contortionist training, my poor tongue is still put under stress at the end of each year, when it is forced – many times daily it seems in the lead up to Christmas – to utter those dreadful words: “I’m not really doing Christmas this year”.

Much to the horror of my peers and colleagues, my idea of a perfect Yuletide is to be in some godforsaken place where no one can reach me, to hopefully be forgotten by the world. This year I am doing just that, and escaping to a powerless hut in the middle of the Maniototo. It will be sheer bliss.

As far as the gift giving bit goes, my perfect gift is something that can be consumed, and I recently cottoned on to the fact that many others agree with me. So my festive phobias will be soothed this year by the fact that my presents will all be made in my kitchen. In fact the only Christmas shopping to be done this year will be a trip to the supermarket to stock up on baking gear, dark chocolate, liquors and seasonal fruit. I will then lock myself in my house to concoct gastronomic delights, and package them up in swathes of sparkly paper. I admit this is an event I am looking forward to, and so I suppose that I’m finding a way to navigate through Christmas, thus on my way to becoming cured of my Grinchey ways. If so, I may have to believe that anything is possible. I’ll head back to the mirror and re-attempt my tongue roll.

Here are some of my favourite recipes for Christmas gifts. Wrap them with as much flounce and flair as humanely possible. Just don’t give them to the same people that I do.

Decadent Chocolate Tart

400g short pastry
1 ½ cups cream
½ cup milk
½ cup sugar
300g dark chocolate
1 egg

Roll out the pastry and line a shallow tart case. Cover with a sheet of baking paper topped with baking beads, and bake the case blind for 15 minutes at 150°C.

Heat the cream, milk and sugar in a saucepan until boiling. Add chocolate, broken into chunks, and mix till blended. Allow to cool, then whisk in the egg. Pour chocolate mixture into the cooked tart case and bake for 20-25 minutes or until set. Dust with icing sugar – or, if you are really festive, place a cardboard Christmas tree stencil over before dusting to get a little picture on top of the tart.

Poached Apricots in Dessert Wine

This is lovely served warm with ice-cream, yoghurt, or lumped over simple cakes.

12 ripe apricots
¼ cup sugar
A third of a cup of cup water
1 ½ cups dessert wine
1 vanilla bean

Place apricots in a bowl of boiling water and stand for 4 minutes. Drain water and peel apricots. Make a slit in their tummies and remove the pips. Place sugar and water in a saucepan on low until sugar has dissolved. Bring the heat up to simmer, and then add wine and vanilla bean. Simmer for 5 minutes before putting in the apricots, and simmer for a further 5 minutes until soft. Ladle into sterilized jars and seal. Tell your loved ones to refrigerate after opening.

Orange Biscotti

1 ½ cups raw whole almonds
2 ½ cups flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 cup castor sugar
3 eggs
1 Tbsp orange rind
1 tsp orange juice

Dry roast the almonds in a 180°C oven for about 7 minutes, tossing occasionally. Be careful not to burn them. In a bowl, sift the dry ingredients. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, orange rind and orange juice. Add to dry ingredients and mix until a dough forms. Add the whole almonds, turn out onto a floured surface and give it a bit of a kneading. Shape dough into sausages about 3cm across, and flatten a bit with your hand. Bake the sausages at 160°C for 30 minutes until set. Allow to cool, and then cut into 1cm slices. Return to oven and cook for about 5 minutes on each side until toasted.

A Gripe of the Times

It is always disheartening when you are served bad coffee. Some may call my passion for food austere, as I treat my fare with the utmost respect and expect others to also. So when you present me with a mound of steaming shite on a plate, being a sensitive soul I can’t help but feel deeply disgusted, disappointed and, to be forthright, personally attacked. Whether it be over-boiled, over-seasoned, over-stewed, over-brewed or sat for too long beneath the warming lights drooping sadly as a consequence, I am driven near the point of tears.

Upon discovery of my badly extracted coffee the other morning you may well understand my state of distress. Being in the car, and driving madly to an important appointment I couldn’t easily ask them to make me another cup. Panicking, I screeched the car to a halt, did a desperate U-turn mid street, and careened back to the café to return the coffee. And then it struck me that I didn’t have time to park the car, let alone wait for the young drip behind the counter to re-make my order. So I screeched the car to a halt again, repeated the U-turn, and drove to my appointment, neglected coffee cooling rapidly in the cup holder.

Later that day I found myself brooding over the madness of that event now past, and began to wonder; when did life become such a rush that we have to settle for second rate coffee? A wave of nostalgia flooded over as I reminisced about the seemingly endless days of my tomboy childhood.

Now there are never enough hours in each day to do the things I need, let alone want. I, like many others become so wound up in my own self-importance, and the pressures of time and of conforming to time, that sometimes I get an anarchistic urge to escape. I tell the world I’m ill, and flee with the dog to lounge for hours by the sea, and wander the hilltops. I imagine, if all of life were fragments of this one tranquil day, we would have the time to breath, to love, to give food the respect it deserves, and with luck, to never have to drink a bad coffee.

Our Daily Bread - rediscovering the joys of food

After a recent break-up, I had one of those epiphany, change your life around moments. No, I didn’t cut all my hair off (I don’t have much to begin with), or move house, but I did rediscover an old passion of mine. Previously suppressed due to other (ahem) peoples’ influences, the need to cook began to bubble up inside me, like a well about to overflow. I don’t mean cook as in cooking a quick weekday evening meal, but real cooking, getting back to basics, and enjoying it for the process alone. Breads, fresh pasta, pies, tarts, cakes… there is something truly spiritual in transforming a bunch of ingredients into something delicious. In fact, I always used to say, and will begin to say again, that if I had to choose a religion, it would be cooking, and if there was a god, it would be food. Not that my god would be so good for our waist-lines, but I like to live like the French Women do, and see not good food and bad food, but all food in moderation and appreciation. So there is no heaven and hell in my religion? Suits me.

I have just finished a batch of brioche, a rich and buttery French bread. The entire experience was an affirmation to my faith. From the first step of preparing the warm bath water for my yeast to grow, making brioche is a feast for the senses. Watching the yeast bubble and fizz and develop was a revelation in itself, the scent of my growing brood filling the kitchen. My parental instincts kicked in and I found myself caring deeply about the wellbeing of my fungi. I separated the eggs using my fingers to experience the full sensuality of it. Then I mixed and kneaded, pulling, stretching, and pounding the dough until it was silky and shined like a wet puddle. With love and care, in it went to a warmed bowl, slicked with pungent grassy olive oil; I watched, and waited, and made myself a cup of steaming coffee, as my beautiful dough sat in the sun on my windowsill alive, and growing. I know if my brood of yeast has been well cared for, because it dances with happiness inside the mix of flour, eggs, butter and milk, and turns it into a mound of stringy, sponge-like dough. With all the sorrow in the world I knocked my dough back down with my fists and separated it, placing each piece into its’ new bed of fluted little brioche pan. After a second rising (rather like Christ I think) it cooked, until the sweet bready odour permeated the entire house, wafted up my nostrils, and sent me a-running for the oven.

Now they done, but it is not over, because now it is time to share my little jewels with friends and loved ones and let them taste the passion that one brioche bun can contain. I am a food missionary and my aim is to convert them, and you, to the joys of cooking. Try it and see for yourself.

Recipe for Brioche:

¼ cup warm water
2 teaspoons yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
4 cups high grade flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk, warmed

2 large eggs
2 egg yolks
150g butter, softened
1 egg, beaten lightly with a pinch of salt to glaze


Place warm water in a small bowl and sprinkle with yeast and sugar. Sit bowl in a dish of hot (not boiling) water to retain the heat in the yeast mixture. Leave to activate for 5 minutes or more, until the mixture appears foamy and thick.

Combine flour, and salt in a large bowl. Add activated yeast mixture, milk, eggs, egg yolks, and softened butter, and mix. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and glossy.

Place dough in a pre-warmed, lightly oiled bowl and cover with glad wrap. Sit in a warm place until the dough has doubled in volume. This should take about an hour. Knead again lightly.

Shape dough into 12 portions and place in oiled brioche moulds, (if making one large loaf, place all dough in oiled loaf tin). Poke spoonfuls of jam or a small piece of chocolate in the centre of each bun if desired. Set aside to rise again for 20 minutes more.

Preheat oven to 190°C. Glaze brioche with beaten egg and salt mixture and bake for 15-20 minutes (about 25 minutes if making a loaf), or until golden and firm.