Friday, February 25, 2011

Shaky Times

You will doubtless all be aware of the earthquake that hit Christchurch on Tuesday. I managed to make contact with my family reasonably quickly, and they are all safe and well - but many are not so lucky, and the damage is phenomenal. I have been compulsively checking the news, and can think of little else - though this is smaller than September's 7.1 magnitude quake, it has been far more devastating, with many injured, missing and dead.

I have been feeling quite helpless, watching the footage and not being able to do anything. I have flown down for the weekend - I've been helping reshelve the contents of Mum's pantry this afternoon, and tomorrow will doubtless be kept very busy at Merchiston - but it still feels futile. However, I do trust in the experience of organisations like Red Cross, and while I'm doing my bit for my family I think the best way to help those who are suffering greater losses is by donating money. If you're in Christchurch and have avoided the worst, are at a loose end and want to do your bit, the UC Volunteer Student Army has mobilised and is helping out (you don't have to be a student). In Wellington, there is an opportunity for you to get your hands dirty, too - The Great Sunday Bake-Off will deliver as much as they can of your baking to shaken Cantabrians - and will sell the remainder for the Red Cross (that also means if you're keen to eat some home baking you should visit Civic Square on Monday after 10am).

There was also a wonderful piece of news this week for our family: I am now Aunty Cake! A big ray of light to brighten an awful week (sorry Sister Cake, for everyone hijacking all the baby excitement to talk about the quake) - so welcome to little Timothy, no longer to be known as MacGuyver as he was before he emerged, and who chose a very memorable day to arrive (fortunately for my sister she does not live in Christchurch, or it would have been a way-too-eventful labour).

I will try to get back to you soon with a real post - perhaps even incorporating food(!) - and I am very grateful for all your kind wishes, sorry that it has taken me a while to post an update.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Easy Potato Salad

Potato salad was my favourite salad for a long time, probably because it's not actually healthy - perhaps as a child KFC coleslaw edged it out of the top spot but it would certainly come much further up the list than anything with, say, lettuce in it! These days I would probably go with a nice Greek salad over potato, but there's certainly nothing wrong with having some of each, given the choice.

This recipe is very simple, not too unhealthy, and tastes fantastic - there's quite a lot of variation in the dressing used in potato salad but I love the fresh zing of the yoghurt used here - and it's so easy!

The concept comes from Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food (which, by the way, I strongly recommend for people learning to cook - it covers the basics really well) and is introduced as an "evolution salad" - you start with the absolute basics and can dress it up step by step as you desire. I often leave the last step - the addition of bacon - out, but this time round I cooked some and took it to our picnic in a separate container to be added on top, as we have quite a few vegetarian friends, so adding it to the salad would have been a bit mean.


The essential ingredients are potatoes, olive oil, lemon juice, natural (unsweetened) yoghurt, and salt and pepper to taste (Jamie actually claims the yoghurt is optional but I don't think it's potato salad until it has a creamy dressing). Then you can add chives and/or bacon to lift the flavour. It is great with everything, but it's always nice to know something will still have ample flavour-factor without some of the ingredients -  the bacon is by far the priciest part, and I like feeling the freedom to perform a cost/benefit analysis: will the bacon add enough extra flavour to warrant making the dish cost $7 more?



How do you make your potato salad? I know some people use mayo, I've heard of (though have to admit to being slightly disturbed by) sweetened condensed milk dressings, and I know my mum uses the leftover spuds on Christmas Day combined with cream to make her version. I personally really love the tang of this - and also that it's relatively healthy.


Easy Potato Salad (adapted from Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food)
Ingredients
1.5kg potatoes
1 Tbsp olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
600ml natural unsweetened yoghurt
a handful of fresh chives
4 rashers of bacon
salt and pepper to season

Cube the potatoes and boil in a saucepan until just tender. Drain and toss through olive oil and lemon juice, then season with salt and pepper. Allow to cool for a few minutes. In the meantime, chop the bacon into small pieces and fry (if using). Chop the chives. Toss the yoghurt, chives and bacon through the salad. Chill until serving.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Duke Carvell's, Wellington

We've had a spectacular Wellington weekend, and Mr Cake's parents happened to be paying a flying visit to Wellington - we've noticed that often the weather puts on its worst shows for out-of-town visitors, so they believe we live in a miserable awful city - well, not this time! It was scorching hot, not a cloud in the sky... Fabulous. We met up with the Cake-in-laws for lunch on Saturday, and took them to Duke Carvell's, which is a wonderfully quirky wee place just off Cuba Street. There are lots of portraits on the wall, cool chandeliers and lots of other little touches which give it a very distinctive character.


Aside from the awesome decor, the first sign of a good eatery came when all of us were wracked with indecision over what to have. Mr Cake's dad decided fairly quickly that he would have the burger, but the rest of us were wavering - over four or five choices each! - and had a hard time settling on one dish.

Eventually we placed our orders. Mine was a very last-minute decision - though I was helped by two of my shortlist items being chosen by the others (illogically, even when I'm not sharing food I tend to try to order different dishes from others I'm with)  - and the wait was a bit on the long side, but our meals were well and truly worth waiting for.


Mr Cake's mum chose the gnocchi, which was soft and pillowy and the bolognaise sauce was gorgeously rich - real comfort food, excellently done (the serving was perhaps a little on the small side - but at least they didn't fall into the serve-three-times-as-much-because-it's-pasta trap). Mr Cake's roast pumpkin, chorizo and chevre salad was delicious - probably not my pick of the bunch but only because everything else was so good! The pumpkin was lovely, and the whole thing vanished pretty quickly, which is always a good sign.


Mr Cake's dad chose the slightly famous Ali Ba Ba burger, which I had been eyeing up, thus helping me become a little more decisive, and I was pretty jealous when it arrived - the fried Kefolagraviera cheese (a salty sheep's milk cheese) and pulled lamb shoulder looked fabulous and were well enjoyed. The fries, while clearly not the focal point of the dish, were perfectly cooked, which is a disappointingly rare occurrence.

My lamb sweetbreads (not something I am in the habit of ordering, but you have to try these things) was a great lunch - tender, succulent meat delicately seasoned - and the green capsicum and potato hash not only satisfied my carb cravings but also carried a great flavour; I was really impressed that I could taste the capsicum, I admit I expected it to be just a few flecks of green amongst the spud. A great meal!

I can also heartily endorse their fabulous hot chocolates, which I sampled the last time I was here, with a group of fellow foodies - they remain the best hot chocolate I've tried in Wellington. Sadly Saturday was a bit too tropical to feel like a hot choc day.

I definitely recommend Duke Carvell's - it was a lovely lunch, and very reasonably priced for such good food. Next time: definitely the burger. And hot chocolate.

What's your strategy for choosing food when there are too many excellent-sounding options on a menu?



Duke Carvell's is located at 6 Swan Lane (off Cuba Street), Wellington, ph 04 385 2240, dukecarvells.co.nz

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Tur-duc-ookie

Okay, so the name isn't totally accurate but I think it sums up the concept quite well. If you're not familiar with turducken, it's a name often given to a rather ridiculous but somewhat amusing dish consisting of various types of poultry stuffed inside each other (traditionally chicken inside duck inside turkey, but some more adventurous souls have managed to extend the challenge to the extreme; Grimod de La Reynière apparently created a 17-bird equivalent in 1807 (thanks Wikipedia). Overkill, much?

My sugar-infested translation is entirely vegetarian, and (to me!) much more appealing. I spied a recipe for Oreo-filled chocolate chip cookies the other day, and started thinking about the cookie equivalent to turducken - hence "tur-duc-ookie" (hyphens added to avoid unfortunate misreadings!). I liked the cross section view but thought two layers was too few - three seemed the bare minimum.


I grabbed some Oreos from the supermarket, but also thought it'd be good to try with some more Kiwi biscuits as filling too - and the mini Squiggles and Toffeepops seemed just the thing - being smaller made it possible to have a not-too-stupidly-huge tur-duc-ookie

I opted for chocolate chip cookie dough for the inside cookie layer, and afghan dough for the outer layer; I thought the afghan would be a little more likely to be able to hold together around the inner layers, and also hoped for a bit of a layered effect with the lighter coloured dough in between. 


I started off with an Oreo filled tur-duc-ookie; I took a lump of chocolate chip cookie dough, shaped and prodded it till it covered the Oreo completely, and then repeated with the afghan dough. 


The resulting cookie was utterly massive, and I realised that a) anyone who tried to eat the whole thing would probably clog their arteries in one fell swoop, and b) it was really smart to grab the mini cookies so the rest could be a bit smaller. 


Applying the same concept to the mini biscuits yielded a more manageable (but still fairly large - probably heftier than a Cookie Time) result. So I made 12 of them. Cos you know, you can't have too much cookie...


 The Oreo version dwarfed the other - you wouldn't think that the cookie on the right was really several servings in itself. I guess that makes the one on the left a full meal. ;-) (having cornflakes in it means it's breakfast food, right?)


Figuring out when they were cooked was a bit of guesswork, but as it turned out I got it right - the giant cookie took about 20 minutes, and the others about 15. They were cooked just in time for me to bundle them into a container and take them to the Victoria University Summer Shakespeare in the Botanic Gardens - we'd arranged to meet friends for a picnic. I highly recommend it, if you're in Wellington and looking for an evening's entertainment; I thought it was an excellent production, magnificently acted and some fantastic modernisations.


So how did they turn out? Well, as you can see from the cross-section the choclate chip layer doesn't show up very well - perhaps a plain cookie (i.e. no chocolate chips) would have worked better for the in-between layer (and it's not like they needed to be more chocolatey) but they were delicious. We haven't attacked the Oreo one yet, as it seemed a bit scary and this morning we're off to run Round the Bays (well, Mr Cake is already running, as he's mad enough to want to do the half marathon) and suspected it might not be the best running fuel. I don't think it'll last long afterwards though!

It was also a pretty fun experiment - if you want to make the cookies more manageable by all means try with just one type of cookie dough - but we really liked them the way they were.


I won't write up the recipes; if you want to make these the chocolate chip cookie recipe I used is here, and the afghan recipe is here. Half a batch of chocolate chip dough, one batch of afghan dough and a packet of mini toffeepops or squiggles will make about 10 large cookies. Cookie dough freezes excellently, so if you want to make the whole batch or you find you have excess when you're done just wrap it well and pop in the freezer.

Am I completely nuts or do you think tur-duc-ookies might catch on? ;-)

Friday, February 18, 2011

Steak Night, Resurrected

Dear readers, I have to apologise for my infrequent postings. I have had no energy for baking or blogging for the last couple of weeks, and though I have written a few bits and bobs it took a lot of effort. It wasn't until yesterday, when some workplace wellness people were encouraging us to sign up for the latest and greatest "keep active" kind of challenge that I realised: I am probably low in iron. I know I'm not great at holding on to the stuff, and we don't eat that much red meat (I do try to get my leafy greens in but prior experience tells me that's not enough)...

So I decided we need to reintroduce the short-lived tradition of steak night. I probably don't need to tell you about it every week (I wouldn't want to become known as Mrs Steak!) but I got heaps of great tips when I asked you for advice so thought I'd share some of them - though my technique is still far from perfect -for anyone else who hasn't quite got the technique yet.


Tip number one was to buy some decent meat - so I popped down to Moore Wilson Fresh and checked out their selection. I couldn't remember which cut was most recommended but this one apparently won the "Steak of Origin" award, so obviously gets something right. ;-) It's also been aged, and is kind of pricey - I know that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best but price often closely correlated with quality so I went with it. Probably not the sort of money you'd want to spend on your dinner every night, though! (in our student flat we used to allow $3 per person per meal, so two pieces of steak = dinner for 6+ hungry students)


Most of the key things are pretty simple - and largely it's all around not messing about too much. The process I followed (with thanks to Mary, Grizabella, Kate and my Aunty Jenny!) was:
 - bring the meat to room temperature
 - rub with a little olive oil, salt and pepper
 - sear the steaks in a hot pan - preferably cast iron or similar (bonus points for ovenproof)
 - put in a hot oven for about 10 minutes (depending on size/thickness)
 - rest on a warm plate covered with foil for 5-10 minutes
 - eat!


Eye fillets are pretty thick, and the bloody look of them after 10 minutes made me think I needed to cook them a little more, which was misguided - for our preference of medium-rare they would have been perfect at 10 minutes. We didn't cook them much more, though - only a minute or two, so they were what I'd call medium, a bit of pink left, and beautifully tender and moist anyway.


This was definitely a good way of getting our iron and protein - and hopefully it will help fuel lots more baking. ;-) What cut of steak do you like, and how do you have it?

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Brioche French Toast

Many moons ago, Le Cafe in Christchurch had this glorious brioche French toast which came with poached pears and marscapone. I don't know when they changed the menu - I remember having it with workmates about 5 years ago, so they probably don't even remember it now - but I do, and decided it was about time I made my own. 


Really it's hard to go wrong with something like this - and the concept can be applied to anything sweet and bready; croissant French toast is pretty spectacular, for example. As is a croissant version of bread-and-butter pudding. And croissant anything...

We managed to find brioche at Pandoro (frozen, but we weren't going to get through the whole loaf in one go so the rest of it went straight into our freezer anyway), and instead of poached pears I opted for caramelised pears, which I love dearly - let's face it, I'm not usually one to turn down bonus sugar and butter with my food. And I had some marscapone left from my homemade batch so we were all set.


Since the toast itself doesn't take too long to cook getting the pears on is the first step. Pears, some of the juice from the can, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, chucked in a pot and boiled until the sauce gets thick and gooey - this is so good, sooooooooooo good, but so easy - great with vanilla ice-cream, and/or puff pastry - or, of course, with French toast. It might not be a particularly revolutionary combination of ingredients but it is one of my favourites, not least because of the lack of effort involved. 


I didn't really do anything too special with the French toast - the brioche is really pretty special already - just coated the bread in egg, then dipped in in a bit of sugar and cinnamon (I do like my sugar - I may have mentioned that already). 


More butter (it's good for you! Honest!) and into the pan it goes. Until Golden Brown, or GB, as we commonly referred to this scrummy state in our student flat (sample usage: "does it have the GB?" "No" "Give it a few more minutes then"). Get your plate, marscapone, eating utensils and pears all lined up so you can scoff the toast while it's still piping hot. I may have gotten into a teeny bit of trouble for abandoning Mr Cake's toast in the frypan so I could snap some quick photos without sacrificing the warm gooey goodness of my food. Fortunately he discovered my inattention before his meal was burnt to a char. Oopsy! Lucky he's so forgiving...

This was our dinner on Sunday night. It seemed like a good way to launch into a new working week to me. ;-) Do you have any Sunday night coping strategies?


Brioche French Toast with Caramelised Pears
Caramelised Pears
1 tin pear quarters in juice, with half the juice reserved
30g butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon

Place all ingredients into a saucepan over high heat. Once the butter is melted stir to combine and leave to cook until the sauce is thick and syrupy.

Brioche French Toast
4 slices brioche
2 eggs
3 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp cinnamon
butter, for frying
marscapone, to serve

Heat the butter in a frypan over medium heat. Beat the eggs together to combine and mix the brown sugar and cinnamon together on a plate. Dip the bread first in the egg, then dip in the cinnamon sugar. Fry until golden brown and both sides. Serve with caramelised pears and marscapone. Serves 2.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Parade Cafe, Wellington

A standard Saturday in the Cake household consists of a morning at the gym - we have a bit of a tag team as I go to BodyAttack and Mr Cake goes to BodyPump, which is straight after - so I sort of wave at him as I leave. And then there are the chores. Ahhhh, weekend. Sometimes you have to ignore the washing and vacuuming and ironing, though, so this weekend after our gym relay (you surely didn't think we'd give that up?) we headed down to the Parade Cafe on Oriental Parade for lunch.

Parade Cafe is apparently a bit of an institution, having been feeding hungry parade-walkers since 1994, but is now located in the tugboat on the Parade, which can only make it better - a boat cafe! Awesome... 


It was super busy, which is usually a good sign for the food though not neccessarily a good thing for hungry post-gym bellies. ;-)

Mr Cake ordered the Parade spicy chicken burger, while I chose the calamari salad, and we also got a starter/sharing plate (their classification) of potato cakes with feta and spinach. The potato cakes were really delicious, but the huge pile of salad made it more of a light meal than a starter or side - we didn't touch any of the salad, which seemed a bit wasteful, but we both had enough on our plates. I'd definitely have this as a meal though.

Mr Cake's chicken burger was okay - nice and flavoursome but a little on the dry side. I really liked the "wedges" (more like roasties or crispy potatoes than wedges I thought but super tasty all the same) that came with it.

My calamari salad had really nice flavours, but sadly the calamari seemed quite undercooked - perhaps a function of the busy-ness, but the calamari rings were limp and pale, not crisp at all. The salad was good and fresh and the sweet chilli sauce was super tasty, and I'd also try this again - though maybe only if the kitchen didn't look rushed off their feet. The staff were great and it is a pretty sweet location - but maybe Saturday lunchtime isn't the best time to visit.

The cakes in the cabinet all looked pretty alluring, too, and I was eyeing up a bit slice of carrot cake but the queue was pretty long so I passed this time... So now I have a proper reason to pay them another visit sometime. ;-)

Do you accommodate slight inadequacies when it's clear a cafe is busy, or do you think they need to be up to scratch all the time?




Parade Cafe is located at Freyberg Lagoon, Oriental Parade, Wellington, ph 04 939 8517, www.paradecafe.co.nz
Theme Design by Quentin de Manson Web Design