Samantha

I love to bake. I’ve said this before, baking is something that relaxes me, makes me happy and allows me to make others happy. One day I really do wish I could open a cake shop. Spread the baking joy, and all that. I got asked the other day what my favourite item to bake is, and I thought that would be a simply answer. But it really isn’t. I do love cupcakes, but in terms of baking and decorating… they can actually be rather boring. Sprucing them up a bit by changing the flavours can make it a little more interesting. White chocolate cupcakes for example are a favourite, as are caramel.

It’s also fun to experiment with icing. Once I made a meringue topping for my white chocolate cupcakes and added little silver cachous – was actually quite effective! Cakes are fun. They’re so easy to decorate in interesting ways, make them different colours and shapes. My favourite thing about cakes is the way you can slice them in half and fill them with various filings that surprise you when you bite into it. There’s one particular cake i’ve made a few times in the past six months that has been a real favourite – dark chocolate mud cake with raspberry filling. Then smothered in chocolate icing.

My banana cake with chocolate filling always seems popular also! Along with cakes and cupcakes though, I love trying out new recipes.

Banoffee pie is a new favourite. I found a simple recipe which is quick and easy to make and it produces an incredibly tasty desert. I’m a little wary of making it though…. the first time I attempted it we were running late for a dinner party. I was trying to rush my way through making the filling and opened a can of caramel too quickly. The can lid cut my hand and the pain was incredible! Luckily I didn’t get any blood in the pie. I did however have to get taken to A&E to get my hand stitched up! My parents were visiting from Christchurch at the time so Dad took me to the doctor while Mum finished off the pie – which was delicious! (Obviously, I must get the baking gene from her!)

Other dessert baking endeavours have been much more successful. My favourites being the chocolate meringue pie and the little cheesecakes with berry sauce – actually rather simple to make apart from the water bath which can be a bit of a mission. Worth it though, they’re extra tasty!  I love baking, and I love presenting people with baked goods. But i’m forever wondering what people prefer when it comes to baking.

Do they prefer the elaborate cakes with flat icing and little flowers around the edge? With designs that are pretty and look like a work of art? The cupcakes with the towering icing in the shape of a rose that look too perfect to eat?

Or do people prefer the more rustic cakes, that look homemade and delicious. With the icing that isn’t flat, that isn’t a decorators paradise, that looks like the icing has been whipped up and smothered over the surface?

I’m intrigued to know which you would buy, if you were wanting a piece of cake with a cup of tea or coffee – the perfectly decorated cake, or the rustic homemade style cake?

Irene Field

This week’s blog is about nothing. Does that appear to be a precursor to the fact I really have nothing to write about.  I confess. It is.

We are gearing up for a long holiday.  Long, as in five weeks in length. Quite simply, my brain has gone into shut down.  We have had dinner guests twice this week and the second time, I let George take over the kitchen. Thank the Gods of Kitchens that George can cook.

I love having guests over, but it is the ‘what to cook’ that always stresses me. My guests invariably sing my praises and no one has died – yet. Well apart from the time when I was very young (ie last month) and served up some beef that I roasted, only to find it was a boiling beef. To say eating that dinner was a mission, would be an understatement. The beef was dispatched into the bin and a quick trip to the nearest fast food outlet ensued. My cooking prowess fortunately did not damage the friendship, which remained firm for many years.

Back to our first dinner guests. Mrs Guest does not eat red meat or pork, but is one of the few who does not push her dietary requirements onto her hosts.  She will eat other parts of the meal and that will suffice. Mr Guest humbly asked if we could please have roast pork. A dish he is often not served at home. Thank god I thought. Roast pork is my forte.

My secret to roast pork is to scour the rind into tiny squares with a very sharp knife (vegetarians, health nuts and others please blank out this paragraph).  I then rub salt and oil into the rind. Insert copious pieces of garlic throughout the meat. Into the oven at 230 celsius for 20 minutes. Then I turn the oven down to 120 and cook for approximately 3 to 4 hours. Throw the veggies into the dish and turn the heat up to 180 for the last hour. Voila, your Sunday Roast, with melt in your mouth meat and crunchy crackling. Which is not restricted to Sundays. I could not be cruel to Mrs Guest and also served chicken. 

Dessert was the conundrum. With a brain resembling a jellyfish the question was what to serve. When in the bakery section of the supermarket, this frugal old tart always checks the reduced bins. What did I spy in there? Hot Cross Buns – in July!  For some reason my supermarket is still making Hot Cross Buns. Maybe the baker doesn’t realize the significance and season for Hot Cross Buns? I grabbed two packets of hot cross buns for my dessert. I hear your shudder. What fate did await my stale hot cross buns?  None other than Bread and Butter pudding!  

Keep this dessert in mind for next Easter for any leftover buns. Because they were stale, I left the 6 buns intact and just sliced across two buns at a time. Butter the slices and into a greased dish. Then a custard which I call 3/2/3 – ie 3 eggs beaten, add 2 tablespoons sugar and 3 cups of milk. Combine and pour over your buttered buns (the Easter ones). Leave to soak for at least 30 minutes and then bake at 160 degrees for 45 minutes. Serve with a pouring cream. And there you have the most wonderful, simple dessert for a winters evening. No need for added spices or sultanas.  it is all there.

Our remaining meals until we take to the skies? Believe me, they will not be anything to write home about. Jellyfish brain is here to stay for another week. By the time we have our first airplane meal, that will even look gourmet. Do you have times like this?

Samantha

I was speaking to my cousin recently after she had read my first blog on food intolerances and she brought to my attention a thought I had never actually considered – the link between breastfeeding and food allergies. She had recently read an article written by Karen Zeretzke who presents this very argument.

Zeretzke, who wrote this article in 1998, claims the earlier and more regularly a food is ingested by a human baby, the greater the likelihood of developing an allergy to this particular food. This means babies are most commonly allergic to foods they have been offered first. If, however, a baby is solely breastfed, the baby is only exposed to the foods the mother has eaten therefore the risk of developing allergens is significantly reduced. Zeretzke’s article, which is backed up by a number of other theorists, concludes that one of the biggest benefits of breastfeeding for the first six months is the protection it provides from allergies. For example, she pointed out that milk allergies are seven times greater in babies who were fed artificial baby milk (baby powder) rather than being breastfed.

When I first heard these facts I dismissed them, yet the more I thought about it, the more I thought there could be some plausibility in the argument. I myself wasn’t breastfed. I was on formula and a bottle after about a week. Now I have quite a number of foods I must avoid. Then again, my younger sister was also bottle fed and she’s yet to discover any food allergies. Naturally I asked Google what it thought. As us Gen-Y-ers all know, Google has the answers. What I discovered was a completely opposing, more recent opinion on this whole debate.

Experts now believe breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months may not be particularly beneficial for babies. The current advice suggests babies should be weaned at six months, however experts are now saying solid food could be introduced as early as four months. In fact, they suggest the later the baby is weaned, the higher the risk of food allergies and iron deficiency levels.

As this argument was presented only last January, the debate still rages about which is really better for babies. Should we be weaning at four months, six months, or when the mother feels the baby is ready? Do those few months really have a big impact on whether or not a child will develop food allergies?

It’s an interesting and complex question, and I would be interested to see what your opinions are on this particular topic. If you want to read more about these arguments, the Zeretzke article can be found here and the BBC news article from last January can be explored here

Virgil Evetts

We worry so much about the flavours of our food, about the seasoning, the level of spice, the umami. La-de-dah, but it’s very rare to hear anyone fret about texture. Well, maybe the ladies of the CWI, with their cake-crumb fascism, but mostly as a topic it doesn’t get much of a look in. Not here in the homogenised West anyway. Elsewhere it’s taken very seriously- in Japan for example there are dishes that exist purely as textural counterpoints to others.

Personally I find texture every bit as important as flavour. If it wasn’t we’d all quite happily subsist on tasty gloop. But moreover, texture can have a strong influence on how we perceive flavours: the more finely spices are ground, the greater their combined surface area for flavour extraction. Some foods, like pesto al Genovese for example, simply don’t feel or taste finished unless they’ve been ground to a precise point between coarse and smooth, when the oil, cheese, nuts and plant matter gel.

But it’s one thing to get all high and mighty about texture, and another one altogether to have any real control over the matter. One of my greatest bug-bears ( I have a great many) for many years has been the ineffectiveness of conventional food processors and blenders for making Asian spice and curry pastes. Every time I made a red curry, korma, or Laksa paste in my trusty little Kenwood, the finished product was good, but never great. My Cuisineart did no better.  The flavours were there all right- but somehow out of order, and the texture was always just that little bit too…imprecise. The latter might not seem like much, but a mouthful of inadequately ground lemon grass and galangal isn’t pleasant.  Have you tried picking lemon grass fibres out of your teeth? The little bastards snap every time you manage to locate one with your big dullard finger-tweezers, leaving behind a tiny little stump which worries your tongue for days. Shudder.

Traditionally, curry pastes were rendered svelte in a stone mortar and pestle, but I suspect you need to learn this skill at your mother’s knee, and build up some very muscular wrists too. I have it on good authority that the mortar and pestle is slowly but surely disappearing from the Asian peasant kitchens anyway, in favour of various plug-in appliances of the wizz-wizz-chop-chop kind. No doubt many a food commentator will lament this as the sad passing of a simpler age, but the truth is, it’s not much fun being a peasant. There is nothing rustic and charming about the endless toil and dysentery, so I think we should forgive any aspirations of an easier life.

On trips to Asia over the last decade or so I’d noticed one particular appliance in restaurant kitchens over and over again. A very ugly, dated looking sort of food processor-thing, with lots of connectable jars and jugs, and a motor that sounded like it had been salvaged from a downed spitfire.  The machine always seemed to be central spoke of the kitchen, and damn, did it turn out a smooth paste.  Eventually I learned that the ubiquitous monster was a Sumeet “mixie”, an India-made appliance designed specifically for the rigours of the Asian kitchen. From then on it became my driving obsession – I had to possess one.

Now, I find it doesn’t pay to let ones obsessions fester. They get in the way of useful thoughts and are best satisfied or dismissed outright. I’ve never been big on the latter, so I kept TradeMe on the lookout with a Sumeet ‘saved search,’ and eventually secured purchase at a rock-bottom price.  It’s ugly. It’s big and it’s terrifyingly noisy, but it works like a dream. Depending on what blade I fit, or what speed I set it too I can turn out curry pastes smoother than whipped cream, or coconut chutneys like spicy sour butter. 

The difference in a finished dish is profound and disarming. Flavours fall in to harmonious balance, sauces emulsify, and most importantly lemon grass fibres are neutralised entirely.  I may rally against the tide of kitchen clutter, but if you’re serious about your Asian food, an Asian Spice grinder or  ‘mixie,’ (there are several brands available if you hunt around a bit)  is one game-changing and essential piece of kit.