Why My Life Rocks (an essay with pictures)

One of the finest, most pleasurable things in my life is to come home in the chilly evening and hear the noisy whir of the fan in the oven. I get home early, and if M's home and the fan in the oven is whirring away, that usually means the oven's being pre-heated for pizza. The oven will be cranked all the way up to eleven, for maximum tastiness.

M's pizza-making skillz are elite. He obtained a couple of pizza stones a few years ago, and has been gradually refining his technique. We make batches of dough in the breadmaker, and when a batch has risen, take it out, divide it up and freeze it. They freeze really well. When the oven is really, really hot, we take a ball of dough and roll it out very thinly; you don't quite want a cracker for a base, but nothing too bready either. The base is then cooked briefly on its own:

In this pic, you can see the base has been briefly sealed, then flipped: that way, there's a slightly cooked surface directly under the sauce when it's put on, which slows down how much is absorbed by the dough, which reduces sogginess.

When this is just cooked, pop on the lovely tasty toppings. We've only got four here, including the sauce, and I don't want more than that. Actually, the most delicious pizza I ever had was sauce, cheese and olive oil drizzled over the top. The key concern is not an abundance of toppings, but high quality ones. If you use fantastic sauce and good quality olive oil, you're pretty much set. The pizza, suitably topped, is then slid back into the oven and allowed to cook further: it doesn't take long, because all you're really doing is heating the ingredients through and browning the cheese.

Here's the finished result: it's not the best photo ever, chiefly because I was seizing up with delight over my forthcoming meal. Although in this picture you can see a freshly-toasted pizza, still sizzling as the cheese bubbles and the oil on the olives spits, you can't see M hovering over the breadboard, pizza cutter in hand, insisting that I hurry up so he can cut the pizza and we can finally eat.

And that's why my life rocks. Sweet-arse pizza. (Which is infinitely better than sweet arse-pizza, let me tell you.)

On Sammiches Part Deux

Yesterday I wrote passionately (nay, poetically) on the issue of sammiches. I would like to add a little epilogue to my post, in praise once more of the sammich.

Picture this if you will.

After writing my last post, I went home and cooked a fantastic curry, worked on some uni things, played some percussion and then had a glass or two of fine wine.

Then I decided to make my lunch. Thus violating one of my firmest rules: never make a salad for the next day's lunch when you're a few sheets to the wind. I had to implement this law after a few very depressing lunchtimes. Nothing quite sucks all the fun out of your lunchbreak like the discovery that your chickpea/kalamata olive/red capsicum/marshmallow/cucumber salad really is nothing more than soggy cold things in a box. But I digress. My plan was to make a boiled egg salad, with rocket, cucumber, dill mayonnaise, maybe some chopped capsicum and gherkins. Tasty! While my egg simmered, rummagings into the fridgermerator revealed an eclectic yet disparate selection of ingredients: a single passionfruit cupcake, past its prime; a large jar of minced garlic; half a purple onion; a pumpkin; several Lindt chocolate bunnies, whose neck bells tinkled merrily as I pushed them aside in search of cucumber.

My salad was doomed. All I had was rocket, egg, tomato and purple onion. We didn't even have any mayonnaise. The next morning, I had the presence of mind to check my salad before packing it to take to work: while nowhere near as grim as some of my previous late night salad specimens have been, it certainly lacked inspiration and, well, zazz. And then I remembered the delight of the sammich.

Behold.

Wait, wait, wait; this picture doesn't do it justice. You can't tell that I spread the bread on one slice with overripe avocado, and on the other with cream cheese mixed with minced dill. You can't tell that I gently mashed the boiled egg onto the cream cheese, topped it with finely chopped purple onion and tomato, then piled high with rocket. Then wrapped it all up and ported it to work.

This picture sums up the poetry, the sheer divinity, of the sammich I had today, may it rest in peace.

On Sammiches

I have, of late, been considering the sammich. I think I may have misjudged the humble sandwich (or sammich), in a backlash from years of eating them by obligation.

While I was in school/high school/university, I had a sammich for lunch every single day (except on those hallowed days where I bought my lunch). I'm sure of it, because I simply can't imagine what alternatives there would have been.

University was the worst: I made myself a peanut butter sandwich for lunch nearly every day, because it was a lunch that was cheap, could stand being banged about in my bag as I went from class to class, and didn't have to be refrigerated or kept upright to prevent leakage. After a blood test revealed I had astronomic cholesterol levels for a 20-year-old, I cut out the peanut butter and had things like mashed potato and grated carrot sandwiches. Not so great.

So, after graduating, I avoided sammiches as much as possible. They always seemed like a rushed lunch; one you had because you didn't have time for anything else. Or didn't have time for a "proper" lunch, whatever that is.

Recently, I've been reconsidering my knowledge of the sammich. Sure, I can safely state, with the support of empirical experience, that I don't enjoy peanut butter sammiches that have been kept in a backpack for six hours and forcibly marched around a uni campus; but that doesn't seem like a good reason to rule out all sammiches. Especially now I work in an office with fridges, where I can stash all the fresh ingredients until it's time to make the sammich from scratch. There's even sammich toasters to use.

Consider the following:

• a crusty baguette, spread with wholegrain mustard and mayonnaise, then layered with baby spinach, tomato, roast capsicum, sliced roast pumpkin and caramelised onions;
• a pumpkin-and-linseed bread roll, split in two, toasted, and then filled with brie, rocket, thinly-sliced purple onion and a touch of tomato relish;
• two slices of wholemeal bread around pesto, mozzarella, tomato and roast capsicum, all grilled and sizzley;
• thickly-sliced, lightly-toasted raisin and fruit bread, with sliced figs, chopped walnuts and blue cheese, toasted lightly to soften.

Oh dear, now I'm all hot and bothered. Look at that list, just look at it! And I'm sure you can think of at least a dozen more sammiches that would satisfy every cell in your being. I would like to announce a reclaiming of the sammich! Embrace your breaded brethren!

Amateur Cocktail Hour Part Two

The other night, I decided to indulge my curiosity and sample a vodka martini. I'm no normally a vodka drinker of any note, nor am I a martini afficionado. M likes them, but he prefers a dry gin martini to a vodka one. We scored some 42 Below vodka on sale, hotwever, so it seemed like an ideal time to test it out. I always wanted to love the martini: they're so clear and sexy looking. I don't mind the first few mouthfuls, but I get bored with them pretty quickly. I know I like them as dry as possible, and with a lemon twist rather than an olive.

The vodka martini was delicious, but I couldn't drink all of it. It's probably pyschological, but I always seem to get sick of them about 2/3rds of the way through, and give the rest to M. But 42 Below is wonderful stuff.

M tried something different for the garnish. Alert readers will observe that, in place of the more traditional stuffed olive, M has opted for a Ferrero Rocher chocolate on a toothpick, adding a dessert twist to a pre-dinner drink. He said it was lovely, actually.

Amateur Cocktail Hour(s)

I found a can of passionfruit pulp in the fridge tonight, and that can only mean one thing: amateur cocktail hour! Vodka, Cointreau, lemon juice and passionfruit pulp, shaken roughly over ice cubes and strained into a glass. Perfect. I didn't put lemon juice in the first one, but M tasted it and swiftly identified its single failing: absence of lemon. So the second one was vastly superior.

I'm pretty sure the passionfruit pulp was left over from the Pavlova Incident over Christmas, so I cracked it open. I only use about a teaspoonful in my cocktails, so I'm not quite sure what to do with the rest. Perhaps some sort of delicious breakfast is in order? Passionfruit pancakes, perhaps with lemon curd? Maybe a passionfruit souffle? Actually, that sounds pretty freaking sweet. Hmm, maybe some passionfruit cupcakes for morning tea at work on Friday? So many choices!

Tonight the mood was upon me to bake cakes and muffins and similar tasty, fluffy items. But I hardly eat them. I wouldn't like to say never, but it wouldn't be too inaccurate. I appreciate cakes and whatnot, I just don't want to eat them. Biscuits, brownies and other cakey treats tend to fall into the same category, and it's a real shame, because I love cooking them. They're simple and satisfying to make, them make the house smell good, and you can get away with all sorts of experimentation and ingredient substitutions. But they don't do much for me when they're done cooking. I tend to only make them when I need to take something (like to a work morning tea, or a lunch with family).

I restrained myself and didn't bake anything. It was a near thing, though: I had to promise myself that I would bake the passionfruit cupcakes for Friday morning tea, tomorrow night. I'm really looking forward to it, actually. I think I'll make some ratatouille as well, since I feel the psychological need for a hearty hot meal, but not really the physical need, if you catch my weighty drift.

Stuff it!

Dolmades, oh-oh!
Cantare, whoa-oh-oh-oh!

I made stuffed vine leaves last night, which were fantastic. I'm beginning to suspect I'm awesome, although after M's croissants on Sunday morning, it's hard to say (I think he's set the bar, you know what I'm saying?).

Anyway, yes, vine leaves. We bought a packet of them in brine a few months ago, and they were still preserved and still tasty, so I thought "I'll do that". It was a lot of fun, and I regret not taking more pictures of the process in order to adequately convey their (and my) awesomeness. On the other hand, they're not that photogenic. First you have a big pot of cooked, spiced rice; then you have a pot full of stuffed vine leaves; so photos are hard to make the whole affair look appetising.

bethini's awesome-stuffed leaves

1. chop up a brown onion. Seek help as necessary. Fry the onion in quite a lot (about a 1/4 cup) of good olive oil. After the onion starts to look pretty and translucent, throw in around 2/3 of a cup of short-grain rice. I used arborio because that's all we had and also because I'm awesome.
2. While the onion and rice are sizzling, add some salt and pepper, some cayenne pepper, some ground cumin and cardamom, a teensy bit of cinnamon, some finely chopped (or minced) coriander and mint, and some pine nuts and raisins. By now, your rice and onion should be hissing fiercely, and if you're anything like me, you're awesome and you're not going to stand for that. Deglaze with a splash of white wine and top up with about a cupful of water. Let it simmer until all the water's absorbed -- you're not trying to cook the rice here, just get things started.
3. Wrap! I haven't the faintest idea on the actual process of stuffing the leaves. Use a generous teaspoonful of the rice mix, and aim to wrap the vine leaf around it into a fat cigar parcel, with ends tucked in. Then let me know the best way of doing it. It must be hard, because I'm awesome and I'm still not sure on the best method.
4. Get a nice big saucepan and line it with vine leaves. Place all your little cigar packages into the saucepan, packing them quite tightly and each one resting on top of its 'seam' where you rolled it up -- that helps them seal. When you've got them all in there, add about a cup of water, a generous squirt of lemon juice and about half a cup of olive oil. Grab a breadplate and squish it down on top of them all, and then cover and bring to a simmer.
5. Simmer for about an hour, and in the meantime, do something awesome.
6. Turn off the heat: ideally, you want to let them sit for a fair while, in order for the awesomeness to truly soak in, but we ate ours right away.

I made some baba ganoush and some yoghurt sauce (although I don't think I can truly call it tzatziki because I didn't actually have any cucumbers in it, which is part of my awesomeness), and served up some crumbled goat's cheese and feta in little bowls. Plus I had some hummus and beetroot dip lying around the fridge, so I pulled those onto the table as well: some hot bread and voila! Awesome!

They really were tasty, and I will probably make them again sometime. Maybe next time I've got something on where I want to show everyone how awesome I am.

Making croissants

Guess what we did this weekend? I'll give you a hint: ooh la la! We is cooking French-style!

M has been indulging in the preparation of croissants, from the ground up. Inspired by some Food Safari, and VideoJug's How To Make Croissants, M was charged for some French cuisine. We're even tossing around an exciting word that begins with S and rhymes with 'oof-lay'.

So, croissants: they begin life as flour and lots of yeast, and other assorted things. After the dough has risen, that's where the butter comes into things. It's like the dough does all the work, and then the butter sashays along with its awesome taste and softness to make things magical.

One of the special things is that you take a huge lot of butter and roll it out between two layers of Glad Wrap and make it into a huge butter-rectangle. Then you lay it in the middle of the flat dough and fold it around the butter like a loving parcel. And roll it out nice and flat again, and wrap up and pop in the fridge for half an hour. Then you take it out, fold it up into thirds and roll it out flat again. You do this a few times, in order to get heaps of thin layers of pastry and butter. The first time, when you wrap the pastry around the butter-tangle, you've got a layer of pastry, then a layer of butter, then a layer of pastry. After you let it rest in the fridge, you take it out and turn it around ninety degrees, then fold it up into thirds again. Then you've got, what, nine layers? Pastry, butter, pastry, pastry, butter...well, you get the drift. And then you do all that again, and you end up with heaps of thin layers of butter and pastry. Yummo. Then let it rest in the fridge overnight.

Then, all things going as planned, you roll it out very very very flat and cut out triangles of pastry, which get rolled up into croissants and left to rise for a while. And then. And then. And then baked into rosy, flaky, moist delicious pastries.

So, this morning, M arose at approximately 7am, which is quite early for a Sunday, and prepared these babies:

Those are the soon-to-be-croissants, having a little rise before they get baked. They're puffing up beautifully, getting plump and tasty. And then it's straight into a hot oven and baked for breakfast.








You know when they're ready.












This is our Sunday morning breakfast table, as prepared by M.

There are not words for how flaky, soft, buttery and perfect freshly-made croissants are. I'm reluctant to compare them to the ones we had in Paris, but believe me, these would be worth a 25-hour flight to enjoy. They were perfect heaven.

I have way more photos of these babies. Close ups, glistening with butter and heat, ready to be munched on; ready to be split and filled with jam or cheese. Oh, my,yes.


In fact, I'm going to show you these photos, and you're going to be so jealous:




Fresh and hot.







With fillings on standby.






Sunday breakfast. Oh yes.

How To Have Lunch On An Autumnal Sunday

On the left, homemade borscht with a touch of natural yoghurt and snipped chives. On the right, a Guinness, frosty and fresh.

Anticlimax

For you, that is, not me.

Our Turkish dicking about in the kitchen (I'm reluctant to say 'Turkish cooking', because really all we did was make bread and dips) was a triumph. But it was so good, and so perfect, and I was so hungry, that there are no photos and you're just going to have to imagine it. Sorry.

The unexpected victory was my baba ganoush! It was so awesome that I'm going to let you know how I did it, then you will rock as hard as I do.

I roasted four long, slender eggplants until they were dark brown and the skin had begun to go papery; while they cooled, I put lashings of garlic, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, lemon juice and olive oil into my processor dealie and whizzed them all together. When the eggplants were cool enough to handle, I scooped out all the soft, roasted flesh and popped that in as well and gave the food processor a quick whiz -- not too much, because you want it to remain fairly chunky. Taste it and add anything else you feel is lacking. Oy, it was heavenly. I just finished it for morning tea this morning, mopping up the last of it with fresh bread and whimpering because there was no more.

I also made a beetroot dip which rocked pretty hard, but not as hard as the eggplant. I used tinned baby beets, drained, mixed with a generous spoonful of fresh yoghurt, as well as some black pepper, salt, heaps of cumin and lemon juice, and a little garlic and olive oil. We had the leftovers for breakfast this morning, on toasties with goat's cheese and baby spinach.

M's Turkish bread was delicious, but a little denser than we intended. Still, it was hot and had a nice salty crust, so we yummed it up. Today he's talking about making malai kofta for dinner, so I'm trying to eat light for the rest of the day. So far it's not working.

And knitting is plowing on! Using some interesting thick-thin handspun I picked up at the markets a few weeks back, I'm working on my very own My So-Called Scarf. I cast on on Thursday afternoon, and it's charging ahead, and although I was a bit concerned about the way it was striping at first, now I'm in love with it. Here's a pic:

You can see the striping that's starting to come through in this shot, although not the full scope of colours; there's patches of lime, forest, emerald, jade, mint and faintest misty green. I really like it, although as I said I was a bit concerned at first. It's roaring along, though: I cast on Thursday afternoon, and now (Sunday) it's over a metre long, which is pretty good. We had lunch out at Mum and Dad's on Friday, and then spent yesterday with M's Mum and Dad, so that was pretty much two solid days of loafing, talking, drinking and knitting. Not that I'm complaining.

Foodin' of the finest order.

Today, M and I answer the ultimate question for the 21st century: Is it possible to prepare too many deviled eggs for a get-together?

Today was my day to catch up with all the chums I had missed since I got sick -- people I haven't seen for over a month or so. It was awesome. But one of the best parts was the food prep. I love this kinda thing: preparing food on a big scale, going through a huge range of dishes and exploring different options. While I was unwell, I came up with the plan (probably part of the whole
getting-out-of-hospital-let's-do-something-dinky backlash) for a vaguely 70's-inspired afternoon tea. Actually, it originally was going to be some dainty teacakes and things, and then I thought of deviled eggs and the whole thing got wildly out of control.

Speaking of deviled eggs, this has been the central bone of contention in our food preparation. M dislikes eggs in general and hates boiled eggs in specific, and so any dish that involved their widespread application was always guaranteed to invite comment. M claimed to have called all our invitees and asserted that they had all refused to enjoy deviled eggs. I claimed he was talking out his trousers. Fortunately, he was distracted by a small, contained bread fire and so the deviled eggs continued apace!

Perhaps it was the heady excitement of the day, or the scent of deviled eggs in the air, but we got caught up in the 70's atmosphere and made vol-au-vents. We used frozen puff pastry, and then cut out rings and bases -- in the picture on the right, the rings are being cut out. We made a corresponding number of bases (same sized discs, but without the bit cut out of the middle) and then stacked 'em up and baked them. Then we were faced with the challenging decision of what to put in them...tough battle. By now, the deviled eggs were in the fridge, so I considered that argument won. But then we brought the vol-au-vent cases out of the oven and they looked awesome! Golden brown, crispy, puffy. Perfect. And then we made the filling: half we filled with spinach and goat's cheese, half asparagus and mushroom. Mmm. Filled 'em up and popped 'em in the oven to warm through. Oh yes. In the interests of not over-catering, we only made about 10 of each flavour, but ohhh, it was hard not to chow down on them while we waited for our guests. (Who promptly chowed them down anyway.)

While the vol-au-vents were cooling (and the deviled eggs were laying low in the fridge), we made sandwiches.


Lots of sandwiches. Miles of sandwiches. Delicious, fresh cucumber sandwiches. I bought little baby fresh cukes from the markets that morning. Lovely and fresh, with plenty of butter and salt. Oh yes again. And we made some tomato and avocado ones, some egg and cress, some avocado and cress, and so on and so on and so forth. Plenty of avocado, cress and cucumber, that's what I'm talking about (apparently).

In addition to which, we had spent the night before making lemon tarts, honey joys and other tasty things. And plenty of 'em. The lemon tarts were inspired by a recent attempt to make lemon butter, which was a little too thick -- but ideal for lemon tarts! Behold!

But the piece de resistance (I know where the accents go, but I'm not sure how to do them in blogger) was M's pumpkin pie. He was pretty damn proud of it, and, oh boy, he should be. The smell was heaven; the pastry firm and light; the filling plump and thick and not at all runny. The entire house smelt like warm, wholesome, autumn pie. The guests agreed. There was only one slice left, and that was only because it was ferreted away in a secret coat pocket.

It was exquisite.

I have been an over-caterer for most of my cooking life, and today I thought was the ultimate compliment: all we had left was a couple of sandwiches, a slice of pie, and a few honey joys (which are going to work with me tomorrow, to be circulated among co-workers). It was awesome. I'm so happy with how the afternoon went. It was so wonderful to catch up with our friends, and I felt proud for doing all this cooking and food preparation and it coming off so successfully.

Oh! I almost forgot, we also served champagne, orange juice and rosewater coolers (rosewater, lemonade, gin, lemons...oh my, yes). Refreshing, tasty and completely gone by the end of the afternoon. Yes indeed, a triumphant catering.

There was one last thing: M's canapes. Beautiful (that's them above). He came up with these at the last second, and whipped them together in the space of about fifteen minutes. The guy's got brains coming out of his fingertips. Checkout a closeup:

Pretty good, huh? Those are rounds cut out of toast, topped with tomato, avocado, cayenne pepper, chives and mayonnaise. Bee-yew-tiful. And they disappeared pretty damn quick.

Oh, and the deviled eggs? Forgot to photograph them. Gone within the hour. Je ne regrette rien.

Food, glorious food, and also photos thereof. And such.

My laptop cable is here now. There's going to be a lot of photos in this post.

I've missed my laptop so much. M has let me use his computer and laptops while the Mac has been indisposed, but it's not the same. Anyway, just because the laptop's been AWOL, doesn't mean I've been slack. During my week off sick, following my discharge from hospital, things were pretty damn boring. But not pointless -- I did some cooking.

I made cookies! Delicious, chewy M&M cookies. They were splendid, as well as a perfect way to use up the huge quantitities of M and/or M's that I had in a bowl (M brought me three bags full while I was in hospital. He's great.).

Wanna see more cookies? Try to ignore the filthy oven, landlords. Mmm, tasty cookies. They were perfect, too. The blend of brown and white sugar gave a subtle caramelised flavour, and the crispy shells on the M&Ms remained crunchy and tasty. I loved them.

Also, I made bread! First time I've ever made bread, and I saw no reason to be cautious or even mildly restrained. Full-on, delicious, spinach and cheese bread. I made sure I used all the cheeses I could get my hands on: marinaded feta, cream cheese, shredded mozzarella and parmesan, all mixed with some minced spinach and a little salt and pepper. Oh yes. It took ages to rise -- the only reason I was patient enough to let it rise properly is that I had forgotten it was in the bread-maker, rising away happily for nearly three hours. I stuck it into the oven as soon as it was risen and presto:

Beautiful, isn't she? I kept ducking into the kitchen and gloating over it, refusing to cut it until I was satisfied it had cooled enough to be safely sliced -- no squishing!

And, oh, wasn't it delicious? A perfectly even, well aired, fluffy, light bread, riddled with cheesey goodness and tasty spinach. It was heaven. Delicious toasted, spread with goat's cheese and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. Or even just with slices of blue cheese. Oh, I was so proud. I thought about getting t-shirts printed with "I Made The Bread" across the boobs, but then I ate all the bread. Delicious.

M and I are preparing for a tea party! We've been cooking up a storm, getting some splendid things ready for my "I'm Not In Hospital Anymore!" party with some chums. I'll take some photos to show off the platters of heavenly food we've prepared. (You should see M's pumpkin pie. Exquisite.)