When you're almost literally on the other side of the world from your home country, you need a mummy and daddy.
You need them for the following things:
* helping you transport items of furniture around your new town because you have no car, and can't afford a delivery van
* putting up a curtain rail - or 6 - because even at the age of 29 you've never done that before and even if you had you don't have the necessary power tools to achieve this
* pretending your house looks wonderful after achieving the first two, even though it looks like a sparsely furnished hotel room
* sending you secret presents because they know you have no-one else who is going to do this for you and you might feel left out
* pretending that your proficiency in your new language is actually much better than it is
* inviting you around for dinner because they "want to spend time with you" (i.e. know that you have no other social life)
* offering to go on day trips with you to rural places because they know that you have no transport other than bikes (short haul) and trains (long-but-quite-specific-location haul)
And also for love and consolation when you're far away from the warmth of your own familial bubble.
I am so grateful that, unlike most of my colleagues, I have a constant and loyal source of support, advice and translation service on hand. Moving here would not have been nearly as seamless or as easy if we hadn't had friends and family here who, despite the distance, have kept in touch with my parents for the 30 years since they left the Netherlands in 1984. It makes you realise the value of friendship, and the value of creating friendships that will one day be part of yours (and your possibly your children's) lives in years to come.
Yay for friends.
Monday, January 20, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Mint and Spinach Salad with Fried Tofu (Vegan)
Mr N was dubious when I said I was putting mint in this, but he was wrong.
Mint and Spinach Salad with Fried Tofu
Ingredients
Mint and Spinach Salad with Fried Tofu
Serves 2 for a meal, 3-4 for small portions
Ingredients
For the fried tofu
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon salt
0.25 teaspoons cayenne pepper
0.5 cups fine breadcrumbs
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
250g (or thereabouts - packages seem to vary) firm tofu
For the salad
Prepare the vegetables according to your salad preferences/hunger level. The amount I used and what I did is in brackets.
Spinach (approx 1.5 cups per person of smallish leaves)
Carrot (I used two smallish carrots, sliced thinly into 3-4cm pieces)
Capsicum/Bell Pepper/Pepper (I used one that was half way between green and orange - it looked nice with the carrot - and cut it into thin lengths)
4-5 leaves of fresh mint, chopped finely
Balsamic essence (or whatever that thick balsamic stuff is called that posh restaurants use - the one I got is called "Acetico Balsamico de Modena" which according to Wikipedia is the real stuff, but it is very thick, not at all like vinegar, so now I don't know what to think)
Olive oil
Method
1. Mix the dry ingredients for the fried tofu in a bowl.
2. Chop the tofu into small chunks (I recommend slicing in half through the block, like filleting a fish, then chopping into cubes).
3. Mix the tofu and 2 tablespoons of olive oil in with the dry ingredients. The mixture should mostly stick to the tofu. If bits don't, add a little more olive oil.
4. Lightly oil a frying pan and heat over a medium to high heat.
5. Tip the bowl of tofu (even any bits of the mixture that haven't stuck to the tofu) into the pan.
6. If you're good at multitasking, you can prepare the salad ingredients white the tofu fries. Just mix around the tofu bits every so often to ensure they're not getting burnt. Once they are a golden brown all over, turn the heat off. They don't need to be totally hot when they go into the salad so they can sit there while you finish prepping the salad things.
7. Put the salad vegetables into bowls. (Or plates - I'm not judging.) Put the fried tofu on top. Drizzle a little olive oil and balsamic essence over the salad. (Bonus marks: make a nice pattern with the balsamic like they do on takeaway pizzas.)
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Easy Thai Red Curry (Vegan)
Thai Red Curry
Serves 2-3
Ingredients1 medium onion
4-5 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon oil
2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste
0.5 teaspoons salt
20-30 sugar snap peas
2 handfuls green beans/string beans
2 medium-sized carrots
1 capsicum, any colour ('pepper' for you American and English readers out there - goodness knows why New Zealanders say 'capsicum' if neither of you do)
3/4 tin of coconut milk
Rice to serve
Method
If you're serving this with rice (recommended), consider the fact that all methods of cooking rice take more than 10 minutes, which is the approximate time it takes to complete steps 3-7. Don't start too late! My old flatmate thought I was terrible at making stir fries - which is effectively what this is - but actually I was terrible at starting the rice on time, so the stir-fry would overcook.
1. Cut the vegetables into stir-fry-sized pieces. (I recommend cutting the carrot fairly thinly; the other vegetables will cook fairly quickly no matter what size they are.)
2. Dice onion and finely dice or mince garlic.
3. Fry the onion in the oil over medium heat for 2-3 minutes until translucent.
4. Add the curry paste and salt. Fry for a further 1-2 minutes, mixing constantly to ensure the paste doesn't burn. (A little water can be added if it does start to stick to the pan.)
5. Add the carrots and beans. Fry for 2-3 minutes.
6. Add the capsicum and snap peas. Fry for 1-2 minutes.
7. Add the coconut milk. Heat until the coconut milk is hot (2-3 minutes). Season with more salt if required.
8. Serve on rice.
Green Vegetable and Chickpea Salad with Pesto (Vegan)
Due to the space restriction, and our tendency to eat a lot of fresh vegetables, we ended up shopping once every 2-3 days. It was on the third day of one of these shopping units that we discovered that it was a public holiday. Our fridge contained half a jar of pesto, half a can of chickpeas, the wilted ends of a bag of spinach, and a little bit of broccoli and beans that were left over from the stir fry the night before. Oh, and some soy milk. We didn't even have any onions - just some garlic cloves. That was literally all there was to eat in the house.
And so I threw them all together, sans soy milk. What resulted what rather delicious, defying the expectations that I had had when I'd first looked into the fridge. Since then, I've tried to recreate the meal on multiple occasions, making various improvements, but it's never quite been right. So today I decided to put myself back in that position, imagining exactly what I had at the the and how I cooked it. Lo and behold, there it was again. It turns out that all the "improvements" that I made with a well-stocked fridge were actually the problem. As much as I felt the recipe needed onion, it really did not. Finally, after months of remembering nostalgically the Meal of Desperation, it has come into existence once again. And shall now be permanently - or as permanently as a cloud-based system for storing the sum total of human knowledge can be - be scribed for the world to recreate.
Green Vegetable and Chickpea Salad with Pesto
Serves 2Ingredients
8 cloves of garlic
A good handful of green/string beans (100 grams or so)
One third to one half of a head of broccoli
Oil for frying
7-8 tablespoons pesto* (to taste - exact amount not required)
0.5 - 1 can of chickpeas
Spinach to serve (I suggest you wash and dry it before starting on the other stuff because there isn't a lot of downtime)
Salt to taste
* If you're new to veganism, or cooking for a vegan, be aware that some pesto contains cheese. Just check the label.
Method
1. Slice the garlic into thin pieces. Not too small, like if you were mincing it - more like you would slice a carrot, into rounds, only much, much thinner.
2. Cut the beans. I do 3-4cm slices, but hey, whatever's your favourite metric or imperial bean measurement will be fine.
3. Cut the broccoli into fairly small pieces. I cut each floret into 4-6, depending on the size.
4. Heat the oil on a medium-low heat in some kind of cookware. In the shower kitchen I used a saucepan. This time I used my cast iron pot. Other times I have used a frying pan. (Admittedly, the other times haven't been as good, but I don't think this can be ascribed to the pan.)
5. Add the garlic. Fry until soft. Try not to burn the garlic - I find keeping the heat fairly low is best.
6. Add the beans and broccoli. Fry for a couple of minutes.
7. As soon as the garlic starts sticking, add the pesto. Mix around with the veges for a few more minutes.
8. As soon as the pesto starts sticking (see how technical I am?), add the chickpeas. They will need to be drained first, but if they're not perfectly drained that's fine - a little bit of liquid will stop the stickiness.
9. It is done once everything is heated up and the veges are cooked but still crunchy. (They tend to go bright green, but trying to determine their greenness is a bit like noticing your own hair growing. If someone doesn't see you for a while, they're like, "Wow, your hair's grown heaps!", whereas you won't really have noticed. If you want to employ this method of determining your vegetables' cookedness, ask a helpful assistant to come and look at the vegetables before you start cooking, and then call them over every so often and ask if they seem brighter. Bear in mind that they stay bright up until the point where they are inedibly mushy, so your assistant will have to be very onto it. All things considered, I'd just do a taste test. Does the bean seem edible? Yes? Good.)
10. Serve on a bed of spinach. You may need salt to taste - I prefer it quite salty but it will depend on the brand of pesto and your own salt tolerance. Once you've cooked it a couple of times and you know how salty you like it, you can add in the salt between stages 8 and 9.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
A Home At The End Of The World
It's funny how quickly you can fall into the trap of "home".
You know how it is when you travel: you decide to go somewhere cool & exciting, and when you get there you know you only have limited time to do all the cool & exciting things, so you try and do ALL the cool & exciting things that you can possibly fit into one trip, and you come home exhausted.
When you decide, as many well-off New Zealanders do between the ages of 18 and 30, to go and live somewhere overseas, you often have visions of all the cool & exciting things that that city/country/continent has to offer. Perhaps you have visited there before and thought, "This is pretty sweet, imagine living here!" Or you have talked to friends who've gushed about how they had SUCH a good time there and you'd love it too. Or perhaps you've read about somewhere different, and you've imagined your last trip to Whangamomona and how exotic that was, and you've thought about how much more exotic X overseas place is, and you've therefore assumed that the ratio of exoticness to interest will be directly proportional and so it will be entirely the most exotic and interesting place you've ever lived in your life.
The reality is that it's easy to think like a traveller when you make a decision to go and live elsewhere, but much harder to live like a traveller once you get there. Living a day-to-day working life has a lot of elements that are the same all over the world, no matter how exotic your location. Unless you work for yourself, or have some incredibly fabulous/flexible/varied job, you'll have to get up at the same time, 5 or 6 days a week, go to work (where you'll do the same job you were doing at home), come home again, cook dinner, and eventually go to bed. In your week you also have to fit in grocery shopping, cleaning and the various other chores that have to be done when you don't live a transient life.
That's not to say that you don't have time to do any of the fun things that your new city/country/continent has to offer, but picking up toilet paper from the supermarket or getting your brake pads replaced does not quite tally with the romantic visions of the traveller's life.
You also have to take into account the increased time spent communicating with friends and family back home; time which you may usually have spent with them if you were back home, but that time has to be dedicated to finding and making new friends. When you're travelling you tend to have a bunch of transient friends who you hang out with during the day and get drunk with during the night. While this does describe surprisingly accurately the relationship I have with my workmates, there are some subtle but significant differences, mainly to do with "being paid to actually achieve something during work hours" and "being able to function as a full human being before 12pm", facets which do not in any way describe the times I have spent travelling. When you actually live somewhere, you want to have the kinds of friends that you can have a wine with after a long day achieving things during work hours. So in a new place, you spend time getting to know those types of people. But the friends who you used to have a wine with after a long day of achieving something during work hours are also still interested in your life (mainly because they are still imagining your life as that of a traveller, and expect that you will have more interesting stories than the ones you had at home), and so you also spend time Skyping and emailing those people, so that when you eventually go home you don't have to start the friend-making process a third time. (Also because, generally speaking, your friends from back home are not the reason you left, and you quite like them.)
Ultimately, your new home is just like your old home, only with different friends, and with different things that you've been meaning to go and do but never quite get around to.
But I have to say that, on the occasional weekend that I decide to "get away", it's rather nice to think that three hours driving will get me to Belgium or Germany, rather than Dargaville. It's the small things.
You know how it is when you travel: you decide to go somewhere cool & exciting, and when you get there you know you only have limited time to do all the cool & exciting things, so you try and do ALL the cool & exciting things that you can possibly fit into one trip, and you come home exhausted.
When you decide, as many well-off New Zealanders do between the ages of 18 and 30, to go and live somewhere overseas, you often have visions of all the cool & exciting things that that city/country/continent has to offer. Perhaps you have visited there before and thought, "This is pretty sweet, imagine living here!" Or you have talked to friends who've gushed about how they had SUCH a good time there and you'd love it too. Or perhaps you've read about somewhere different, and you've imagined your last trip to Whangamomona and how exotic that was, and you've thought about how much more exotic X overseas place is, and you've therefore assumed that the ratio of exoticness to interest will be directly proportional and so it will be entirely the most exotic and interesting place you've ever lived in your life.
The reality is that it's easy to think like a traveller when you make a decision to go and live elsewhere, but much harder to live like a traveller once you get there. Living a day-to-day working life has a lot of elements that are the same all over the world, no matter how exotic your location. Unless you work for yourself, or have some incredibly fabulous/flexible/varied job, you'll have to get up at the same time, 5 or 6 days a week, go to work (where you'll do the same job you were doing at home), come home again, cook dinner, and eventually go to bed. In your week you also have to fit in grocery shopping, cleaning and the various other chores that have to be done when you don't live a transient life.
That's not to say that you don't have time to do any of the fun things that your new city/country/continent has to offer, but picking up toilet paper from the supermarket or getting your brake pads replaced does not quite tally with the romantic visions of the traveller's life.
You also have to take into account the increased time spent communicating with friends and family back home; time which you may usually have spent with them if you were back home, but that time has to be dedicated to finding and making new friends. When you're travelling you tend to have a bunch of transient friends who you hang out with during the day and get drunk with during the night. While this does describe surprisingly accurately the relationship I have with my workmates, there are some subtle but significant differences, mainly to do with "being paid to actually achieve something during work hours" and "being able to function as a full human being before 12pm", facets which do not in any way describe the times I have spent travelling. When you actually live somewhere, you want to have the kinds of friends that you can have a wine with after a long day achieving things during work hours. So in a new place, you spend time getting to know those types of people. But the friends who you used to have a wine with after a long day of achieving something during work hours are also still interested in your life (mainly because they are still imagining your life as that of a traveller, and expect that you will have more interesting stories than the ones you had at home), and so you also spend time Skyping and emailing those people, so that when you eventually go home you don't have to start the friend-making process a third time. (Also because, generally speaking, your friends from back home are not the reason you left, and you quite like them.)
Ultimately, your new home is just like your old home, only with different friends, and with different things that you've been meaning to go and do but never quite get around to.
But I have to say that, on the occasional weekend that I decide to "get away", it's rather nice to think that three hours driving will get me to Belgium or Germany, rather than Dargaville. It's the small things.
Chocolate Raspberry Brownies (Vegan)
Chocolate Raspberry Brownies (Vegan)
Ingredients
Oil (to grease the baking dish)
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds
6 tablespoons warm water
1 cup margarine
0.75 cups muscovado sugar
0.75 cups white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla essence
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 teaspoons salt
1 cup cocoa powder
1.5 cups plain flour
1 cup dark chocolate chips (or, as I like to call them, "Cut up bits of a block of chocolate from the supermarket")
1.5 cups fresh raspberries
Method
1. Mix the flax seeds and water and set aside.
2. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. (Point at which I actually achieved this step when making the recipe: around step 7.)
3. Grease and line a 25 x 25cm baking dish. (Or a dish with approximately the same square centimetrage.) I really recommend lining the dish because I have had terrible experiences in the past where I am VERY excited about eating brownies, only to find that they have adhered to the base of the dish in a way that makes it impossible to remove, except in "snack size", where the snack is being had by a mouse.)
4. Melt the margarine in a large bowl.
5. Mix in the flax-seed-and-water, vanilla essence, baking powder, both sugars and the salt. Whisk until smooth.
6. Mix in the flour and cocoa powder.
7. Mix in the chocolate chips and raspberries. (If you are using a block of chocolate and cutting it up, then pause at this point and cut up the chocolate, because no doubt you will have forgotten to do so if you are anything like me. Also, turn on the oven (see Step 2).
8. Transfer the mixture to the dish. Mush down so that the top is approximately level.
9. Cook at 180 for 23 minutes. (Why this amount of time? Just that mine turned out perfectly. But as long as the top springs back a bit when touched I'm sure it will be fine. It's not like there's raw egg in there waiting to give you salmonella.)
10. Leave to cool in the dish until you can lift it out (maybe ten or so minutes). Once you've got it out, leave it at least half an hour more before diving in. My experience is that brownies really need a chance to settle and congeal to reach the desired level of squidginess sans breakiness.
11. Mmmmmmmmmm.
* In future I have decided that I will give all tin sizes in square centimetres, because who ever has a dish exactly as it is described in a recipe? No matter how many recipes I try in my life, I never seem to have the right tin. This recipe was adapted from a few other recipes and I was sure that I'd measured the ingredients correctly for my dish, but when I actually got everything ready I realised that the dish was about 1/3 too bag. Solution? Fold up the end of the baking paper, lie a glass sideways in the dish, fold paper over glass to create false wall. Worked a charm. Rather harder to describe in words than in practice though, so I have provided you with visual assistance.
Artist's impression of baking tray and glass combination:
If blogging isn't for me, I intend to start a career as an online artist, just so you know.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Raspberry-Coconut-Currant Museli (Vegan)
I've wanted to try making my own cereal for a long time. I'm not sure why I've waited, since obviously it's pretty easy, but it's one of those things that you don't necessarily think about when you go to the shops, and since I'm not in the habit of buying bulk bin spelt, it's the kind of thing that I can't ever "whip up" from what's in the cupboard.
But the other day I went out exploring and discovered a big organic/natural foods store in the next town over, replete with bulk bins. BONANZA.
Raspberry-Coconut-Currant Muesli
Makes enough for 5-6 breakfasts
Ingredients4-5 cups "crunchy spelt" (I have no idea what this really is - that is genuinely the words that the Dutch used to describe it. Pretty much it looks like big muesli crumbs, which I suppose is exactly what it is. I'm sure you could substitute for whatever muesli base you prefer.)
0.5 cups freeze dried raspberries (They seemed really cheap until I realised that the are priced per 25g, which makes my stash of freeze dried raspberries worth about as much as the current street value of an equal amount of cocaine)
0.5 cups currants (though in my experience, when eaten alone, currants pretty much taste like raisins, so, you know, go with your gut feeling)
0.25 cups desiccated coconut
0.25 cups almond slivers
Method
Mix all these things together in a bowl. Put into a container. Eat some of it (probably with milk). It's really that simple.
Side note: Having just blogged this, Mr N leaned over and said, "There was far too much coconut in that muesli you made this morning you know." I felt like saying, "Perhaps that's because coconut tastes stronger at 11.30am" (the approximate time he got up), but I have taken this as a loving gesture on his part, fearing coconut overdose in you, my worshipful reader. Well, I have a confession to make. I didn't actually measure these ingredients exactly, since muesli making is not, in my opinion, a particularly specific science. You don't like coconut? Leave it out. You can't find freeze dried raspberries? Ditch 'em. You'd rather have organically produced, unprocessed cocoa nibs instead of almonds? Be my guest. Personally I quite like the taste of this, which is why I've blogged it. But I am not a cereal fascist, and I am here to tell you that it's your life, and you can do with it what you like.
Side-side note: Writing this post has made me realise how bad I am at spelling the word muesli. You may not think so, but that, my friends, is the joy of spellcheck.
Creamy Chickpea & Sweet Potato Curry (Vegan)
There are so many variations on curry, and one day I intend to collate them all and make a "Curries for Dummies" collection which explains exactly how to adjust the basic set of ingredients to make pretty much any curry you want. This, however, is not that day.
Creamy Chickpea & Sweet Potato Curry
Takes approx 1.5-2 hours but with around 45 mins downtime
Ingredients
1 large yellow onion
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon turmeric
2 tablespoons ground coriander
10 cloves
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes (I would have used at least double this, but Mr N is a lightweight when it comes to spicy food)
5 cloves garlic (adjust to taste - I would have put in about 10 but I thought that the sight of my chopping that many cloves might have freaked my guests out)
A little water
2 cans diced tomatoes
1.5-2 cans chickpeas (amount depends on how much you like chickpeas, and how big your local chickpea supplier's containers happen to be)
2 sweet potatoes
Sugar
Salt
1 can coconut cream
Method
1. Dice the onion (doesn't have to be small - a rough dice will do).
2. Cut the garlic into small pieces, or use a garlic mincer. Keep it separate from the onion.
3. Measure out the spices (cumin, termeric, coriander, clove heads, chilli flakes) into a small container of some sort. Crush the clove heads between your fingers and throw the pointy stick bit away. (Don't be tempted to put the cloves into the pot - they taste gross if you get them in your mouth during the eating process, and will entirely put you off your meal. If you don't trust me, go ahead. Just try it once. You'll see what I mean. If you're still tempted, make sure you are the Brian Cox of the cooking world and are really good at looking for tiny particles in a superheated environment, as this skill will come in handy when you have to pluck them out individually.)
4. Heat the oil in a large saucepan, pan, or pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 2 mins, until translucent. Add some more oil if it's looking dry.
5. Add the garlic and the spices and cook for a further two minutes.
6. Put in a little water to give you time to open the tins of tomatoes without the spices burning to the bottom. (If you are awesome, which I am not, you will have these prepared ahead of time, but I always forget. I am preparing you for the eventuality that you are not perfect which, even if not borne out in this cooking session, is likely to bite you in the arse at some point during your life.)
7. Open the tins of tomatoes and chickpeas. Add to the pot and mix.
8. Add a bit of sugar and salt - around a tablespoon of the former and a teaspoon of the latter.
9. Attend pot until mixture is bubbling, then turn heat to low and leave for at least 1 hour, stirring occasionally to make sure it is not sticking, and adding a little water if it is.
10. During the time that the curry is cooking, dice your sweet potatoes (sounds like a gangster metaphor, but isn't). Cook in the method of your choosing. I have always favoured the "slap it in the microwave in a big bowl with some water and cook it for random amounts of time until its soft" method, but tonight I slow roasted the diced pieces in the oven until they were cooked and a little shrivelled, and I found it helped the sweet potato keep its shape a little more once added to the curry, so if you can be bothered, I would do it. You could do this any time in the hour that the curry is cooking - the pieces don't have to be piping hot when they go into the curry.
11. After about an hour (to be honest, apart from having to add water as the liquid burns off, you can pretty much cook a curry as long as you like), add the sweet potato and the coconut cream. Stir for a while until the pot heats up again (you may like to turn up the heat slightly). If you're going to serve with rice, now is the time to make the rice.
12. Taste test: does it need more salt or sugar? Add this now and cook for another 5-10 minutes if it does. Otherwise...
13. Serve and eat!
Delicious with: mango chutney, plain unsweetened yoghurt, naan bread, Mr N's special yellow rice (recipe to come)
*here is a pretend picture of this meal because I forgot to take one, but rest assured it looked delicious*
Creamy Chickpea & Sweet Potato Curry
Serves 5-6 normal eaters; up to 10 birdlike ones; or 1 MegaEater
Takes approx 1.5-2 hours but with around 45 mins downtimeIngredients
1 large yellow onion
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon turmeric
2 tablespoons ground coriander
10 cloves
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes (I would have used at least double this, but Mr N is a lightweight when it comes to spicy food)
5 cloves garlic (adjust to taste - I would have put in about 10 but I thought that the sight of my chopping that many cloves might have freaked my guests out)
A little water
2 cans diced tomatoes
1.5-2 cans chickpeas (amount depends on how much you like chickpeas, and how big your local chickpea supplier's containers happen to be)
2 sweet potatoes
Sugar
Salt
1 can coconut cream
Method
1. Dice the onion (doesn't have to be small - a rough dice will do).
2. Cut the garlic into small pieces, or use a garlic mincer. Keep it separate from the onion.
3. Measure out the spices (cumin, termeric, coriander, clove heads, chilli flakes) into a small container of some sort. Crush the clove heads between your fingers and throw the pointy stick bit away. (Don't be tempted to put the cloves into the pot - they taste gross if you get them in your mouth during the eating process, and will entirely put you off your meal. If you don't trust me, go ahead. Just try it once. You'll see what I mean. If you're still tempted, make sure you are the Brian Cox of the cooking world and are really good at looking for tiny particles in a superheated environment, as this skill will come in handy when you have to pluck them out individually.)
4. Heat the oil in a large saucepan, pan, or pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 2 mins, until translucent. Add some more oil if it's looking dry.
5. Add the garlic and the spices and cook for a further two minutes.
6. Put in a little water to give you time to open the tins of tomatoes without the spices burning to the bottom. (If you are awesome, which I am not, you will have these prepared ahead of time, but I always forget. I am preparing you for the eventuality that you are not perfect which, even if not borne out in this cooking session, is likely to bite you in the arse at some point during your life.)
7. Open the tins of tomatoes and chickpeas. Add to the pot and mix.
8. Add a bit of sugar and salt - around a tablespoon of the former and a teaspoon of the latter.
9. Attend pot until mixture is bubbling, then turn heat to low and leave for at least 1 hour, stirring occasionally to make sure it is not sticking, and adding a little water if it is.
10. During the time that the curry is cooking, dice your sweet potatoes (sounds like a gangster metaphor, but isn't). Cook in the method of your choosing. I have always favoured the "slap it in the microwave in a big bowl with some water and cook it for random amounts of time until its soft" method, but tonight I slow roasted the diced pieces in the oven until they were cooked and a little shrivelled, and I found it helped the sweet potato keep its shape a little more once added to the curry, so if you can be bothered, I would do it. You could do this any time in the hour that the curry is cooking - the pieces don't have to be piping hot when they go into the curry.
11. After about an hour (to be honest, apart from having to add water as the liquid burns off, you can pretty much cook a curry as long as you like), add the sweet potato and the coconut cream. Stir for a while until the pot heats up again (you may like to turn up the heat slightly). If you're going to serve with rice, now is the time to make the rice.
12. Taste test: does it need more salt or sugar? Add this now and cook for another 5-10 minutes if it does. Otherwise...
13. Serve and eat!
Delicious with: mango chutney, plain unsweetened yoghurt, naan bread, Mr N's special yellow rice (recipe to come)
*here is a pretend picture of this meal because I forgot to take one, but rest assured it looked delicious*
Thursday, January 2, 2014
The Firework-Maker's Daughter
We have come to a land bountiful in its December-based traditions.
I guess a lot of countries are bountiful in their December traditions, but having spent all but one December living in New Zealand (and the other one in England, which, for seasonal tradition purposes I shall call, "Just Like New Zealand") I have never known the joy of a Dutch Christmas and New Year.
There are three great things about New Year's celebrations here:
1. Oliebollen
Literally translated, it means "oil balls", which is far better than the literal translation of the American equivalent, doughnuts. They are fried sweet dough balls, which may or may not be filled with dried fruits, and may or may not (but should be) covered in icing sugar. Traditionally they are eaten on New Year's night and some kind of oily sacrifice to the gods of the new year. You can buy them everywhere here, in pop up carts that seem to be purpose-built just for the three weeks of oliebollen-craziness that precedes the 31st of December. Goodness knows what they do the rest of the year - clean out their fat dispensers, I guess.
2. Fireworks
Holy hell. I have been to fireworks displays before. I've celebrated some New Years, 4th of Julys and Guy Fawkeses in my time. In my childhood, New Zealand had no ban on rockets, and I used to watch out my bedroom window in amazement, thinking that there were fireworks EVERYWHERE.
There were not.
I arrived back from the UK on the 31st of December at 5pm, and people were already letting off fireworks. OK, I thought, it's dark; that makes sense. People with kids are probably letting theirs off now, before sending the little scamps to bed so they can enjoy their oliebollen in a haze of drunken happiness. But they persisted, through 6pm, 7.30pm (when we left the house to attend our own celebrations), 9pm, 10.30pm, right up until the moment of midnight...when suddenly people actually let off their fireworks.
Oh yes. The preceding 14 hours (because apparently our late arrival into the country had merely given the impression of the fireworks starting at 5, when in fact they had begun at 10am) had been just a practice for what turned out to be an hour and a half of non-stop, crazy, jump-out-of-your-skin-because-of-the-noise fireworks. It was INSANE. People let off fireworks in the streets. Children let off fireworks in the streets. Small children let off fireworks in the streets. People built bonfires, sometimes in the streets. Where we were, people let of fireworks from their balconies, that is to say, holding a firework IN THEIR HAND and pointing it vaguely in the direction of up. Fireworks were thrown into neighbouring gardens, for little other than the pleasure of seeing a firework go off somewhere other than in their own back garden. As Mr N and I walked home, we saw a group of guys in the courtyard of an international company's headquarters, throwing fireworks into the alcove where the front door was, the resulting echo able to be heard from at least a kilometre away.
I have never experienced anything like it. And I'm sure the casualty departments never have either. Oh, apart from every New Year's Eve, ever.
3. Nieuwjaarsduik
This is a tradition that may or may not be a marketing ploy, since my grasp of Dutch is not sufficient to ascertain whether the tradition existed before the corporate sponsorship version in which I participated. The Nieuwjaarsduik is a chance for people to get down to their swimming costumes (or, in some cases, their birthday suit) and run into the North Sea.
All evidence I have found of the Nieuwjaarsduik has been the Unox-sponsored version that happens at Scheveningen Beach in Den Haag, where each person gets provided with an orange bobble hat at the beginning, and a bowl of Unox Pea Soup at the end. For the privilege of these attempts to keep you warm against the cutting wind of the English Channel and your own insane desire to throw off all your clothes in the middle of winter, you pay three Euros. Not a bad exchange, unless of course your friends miss out on tickets, so you end up standing awkwardly near a family of four, hoping they'll remember your face when the announcer mentions that they have a participant who has hypothermia and appears to have no friends, and when you actually do the dip and return, hypothermia-free, to dry land, you discover that the pea soup actually has meat in it and you are a vegetarian.
I did learn a new song though. It's something about a helicopter and it has fun actions that are made even funnier when you are standing with 10,000 other people in your swimwear at a beach on the 1st of January wearing an orange bobble hat.
I guess a lot of countries are bountiful in their December traditions, but having spent all but one December living in New Zealand (and the other one in England, which, for seasonal tradition purposes I shall call, "Just Like New Zealand") I have never known the joy of a Dutch Christmas and New Year.
There are three great things about New Year's celebrations here:
1. Oliebollen
Literally translated, it means "oil balls", which is far better than the literal translation of the American equivalent, doughnuts. They are fried sweet dough balls, which may or may not be filled with dried fruits, and may or may not (but should be) covered in icing sugar. Traditionally they are eaten on New Year's night and some kind of oily sacrifice to the gods of the new year. You can buy them everywhere here, in pop up carts that seem to be purpose-built just for the three weeks of oliebollen-craziness that precedes the 31st of December. Goodness knows what they do the rest of the year - clean out their fat dispensers, I guess.
2. Fireworks
Holy hell. I have been to fireworks displays before. I've celebrated some New Years, 4th of Julys and Guy Fawkeses in my time. In my childhood, New Zealand had no ban on rockets, and I used to watch out my bedroom window in amazement, thinking that there were fireworks EVERYWHERE.
There were not.
I arrived back from the UK on the 31st of December at 5pm, and people were already letting off fireworks. OK, I thought, it's dark; that makes sense. People with kids are probably letting theirs off now, before sending the little scamps to bed so they can enjoy their oliebollen in a haze of drunken happiness. But they persisted, through 6pm, 7.30pm (when we left the house to attend our own celebrations), 9pm, 10.30pm, right up until the moment of midnight...when suddenly people actually let off their fireworks.
Oh yes. The preceding 14 hours (because apparently our late arrival into the country had merely given the impression of the fireworks starting at 5, when in fact they had begun at 10am) had been just a practice for what turned out to be an hour and a half of non-stop, crazy, jump-out-of-your-skin-because-of-the-noise fireworks. It was INSANE. People let off fireworks in the streets. Children let off fireworks in the streets. Small children let off fireworks in the streets. People built bonfires, sometimes in the streets. Where we were, people let of fireworks from their balconies, that is to say, holding a firework IN THEIR HAND and pointing it vaguely in the direction of up. Fireworks were thrown into neighbouring gardens, for little other than the pleasure of seeing a firework go off somewhere other than in their own back garden. As Mr N and I walked home, we saw a group of guys in the courtyard of an international company's headquarters, throwing fireworks into the alcove where the front door was, the resulting echo able to be heard from at least a kilometre away.
I have never experienced anything like it. And I'm sure the casualty departments never have either. Oh, apart from every New Year's Eve, ever.
3. Nieuwjaarsduik
This is a tradition that may or may not be a marketing ploy, since my grasp of Dutch is not sufficient to ascertain whether the tradition existed before the corporate sponsorship version in which I participated. The Nieuwjaarsduik is a chance for people to get down to their swimming costumes (or, in some cases, their birthday suit) and run into the North Sea.
All evidence I have found of the Nieuwjaarsduik has been the Unox-sponsored version that happens at Scheveningen Beach in Den Haag, where each person gets provided with an orange bobble hat at the beginning, and a bowl of Unox Pea Soup at the end. For the privilege of these attempts to keep you warm against the cutting wind of the English Channel and your own insane desire to throw off all your clothes in the middle of winter, you pay three Euros. Not a bad exchange, unless of course your friends miss out on tickets, so you end up standing awkwardly near a family of four, hoping they'll remember your face when the announcer mentions that they have a participant who has hypothermia and appears to have no friends, and when you actually do the dip and return, hypothermia-free, to dry land, you discover that the pea soup actually has meat in it and you are a vegetarian.
I did learn a new song though. It's something about a helicopter and it has fun actions that are made even funnier when you are standing with 10,000 other people in your swimwear at a beach on the 1st of January wearing an orange bobble hat.
The Night Before Christmas
Here in the Netherlands, there is a twofold Christmas. The first event is held on the 5th of December, and is by far the most interesting/controversial of the two. This is Sinterklaas. If you say "St Nicholas" while drunk, you'll have an idea of where the name may have come from.
Plenty has been written about this tradition, but for those of you who don't keep up with the foreign festive mores, let me summarise by saying that Sinterklaas is a old man wearing red who is definitely not Santa, who is helped by a host of cheeky black "knechten" (which is definitely not the same as the word 'slaves') called Zwarte Pieten, in an old Dutch tradition that is definitely not racist. Oh ho ho ho.
Sinterklaas comes to each house on his horse, and then sends the Zwarte Pieten down the chimney. This apparently accounts for their black faces, though goodness knows how shimmying down a chimney gives you gold hoop earrings and bright red lips too. At the bottom of the chimney, children leave out their shoes, and the Zwarte Pieten fill them with gifts. Adults, who are wise to the ways of Sinterklaas, instead celebrate by giving each other a gift, and a poem, the contents of which describe both the gift (in cryptic terms) and the person (in not so cryptic, i.e. sometimes quite cruel/hilarious terms).
My friends and I have a weird relationship with this celebration, since it is alternately hilarious and cringeful if you don't come from the Low Lands. The smiling faces of Zwarte Pieten (both real people with painted faces, and cartoons) are everywhere in the two weeks previous to the 5th of December, and you can't help but feel that a celebration in which a fat white man sends cheeky black people to deliver gifts to children is very slightly racist. But the fact that people here don't find it racist makes it weirdly hilarious, like Cards Against Humanity, but in real life. There was even a protest this year after the tradition was criticised - not for the first time - by someone who had the gall to think that dressing people up as caricatures of Africans from the 1930s might, just possibly, make people feel awkward.
And then, all of a sudden, on the 6th of December, Sinterklaas is gone, to be replaced with the traditional western model of overzealous gift buying in preparation for what used to be, for the Dutch, just a nice meal and a chance to catch up with family on the 25th.
Merry Christmas!
Plenty has been written about this tradition, but for those of you who don't keep up with the foreign festive mores, let me summarise by saying that Sinterklaas is a old man wearing red who is definitely not Santa, who is helped by a host of cheeky black "knechten" (which is definitely not the same as the word 'slaves') called Zwarte Pieten, in an old Dutch tradition that is definitely not racist. Oh ho ho ho.
Sinterklaas comes to each house on his horse, and then sends the Zwarte Pieten down the chimney. This apparently accounts for their black faces, though goodness knows how shimmying down a chimney gives you gold hoop earrings and bright red lips too. At the bottom of the chimney, children leave out their shoes, and the Zwarte Pieten fill them with gifts. Adults, who are wise to the ways of Sinterklaas, instead celebrate by giving each other a gift, and a poem, the contents of which describe both the gift (in cryptic terms) and the person (in not so cryptic, i.e. sometimes quite cruel/hilarious terms).
My friends and I have a weird relationship with this celebration, since it is alternately hilarious and cringeful if you don't come from the Low Lands. The smiling faces of Zwarte Pieten (both real people with painted faces, and cartoons) are everywhere in the two weeks previous to the 5th of December, and you can't help but feel that a celebration in which a fat white man sends cheeky black people to deliver gifts to children is very slightly racist. But the fact that people here don't find it racist makes it weirdly hilarious, like Cards Against Humanity, but in real life. There was even a protest this year after the tradition was criticised - not for the first time - by someone who had the gall to think that dressing people up as caricatures of Africans from the 1930s might, just possibly, make people feel awkward.
And then, all of a sudden, on the 6th of December, Sinterklaas is gone, to be replaced with the traditional western model of overzealous gift buying in preparation for what used to be, for the Dutch, just a nice meal and a chance to catch up with family on the 25th.
Merry Christmas!
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
French Onion Soup (Vegan)
This morning, after the Nieuwjaarsduik, we invited some of our friends around for lunch. "We'll just have to pop past the supermarket and grab a few things," I said, "but you're welcome to come."
It was at this point that one of my friends kindly informed me that, here in The Netherlands, things are actually shut on public holidays. Who knew? In what I realise now is a heathen tradition, New Zealand shops are open on New Years' Day for normal business hours, so that if you don't know what to do with your hangover, you can bring it to a mall with thousands of screaming children.
The invitation was rescinded, and we made our way home alone, contemplating what we were going to eat, considering we had just been away for a week and had left our fridge pretty empty to avoid holiday mould syndrome.
Upon arrival, we discovered that we had pretty much just onions and yoghurt, but Mr N got to work patching together a French Onion Soup recipe from three different recipes he found online, each of which contained some, but not all, of the ingredients we had at our disposal. What a man.
French Onion SoupWould probably serve 4 if our stomachs hadn't been unnaturally expanded from Christmas overindulgence.
Ingredients
3 medium-sized normal onions (people seem to have weird different names around the world for types of onions - these are just your bog standard cooking onion)
1 red onion
1 clove of garlic (you could probably use more; that was just all we had)
2 tablespoons margarine
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons flour
1 litre vegetable stock
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar (handy substitution for sherry vinegar, according to Google, but you need see it not as a substitute, as we did, but instead just a normal ingredient, since you didn't spend 20 minutes trying to piece together recipes that all called for sherry vinegar and then 10 minutes finding substitutes for said vinegar that you actually had in your cupboard)
1 teaspoon rice vinegar (we used sushi vinegar - not sure if it is the same things or not, but sushi recipes ask for rice wine vinegar, so I figure they must be from the same family)
About half a cup of white wine
Some bread, preferably "the good stuff"
Method
1. Cut the onions up into bits. (Mr N got bored halfway through so he cut them in a combination of chunks and diced - he says, "It depends on what texture you want, I guess.")
2. Cut the garlic into very small pieces. Or mince it, if you're a lucky bastard and you have a mincer.
3. Melt the 2 Tbsp margarine and 1 Tbsp oil in a saucepan over medium heat.
4. Add the onions, garlic and salt to the saucepan. Cook on medium heat for 4-5 minutes until the onions are translucent, stirring frequently.
5. Turn the heat down to low. Add the bay leaf and cover the saucepan. Leave the onions to caramelise (takes about an hour). Stir occasionally.
6. After the hour is up, add 2 tablespoons of flour and stir into the onions for two minutes.
7. Add the vinegars, wine, stock and mustard. Stir and bring to the boil. (By 'bring to the boil', I mean, 'leave with the lid on and go and check some music blogs on the internet and then shout "Bollocks!" as the pot boils over.' At least, this is what Mr N did and the soup was delicious, so I'm going to follow his instructions to the letter.)
8. Reduce the heat. Leave soup to simmer for 15 minutes. When there is 5 minutes to go, toast or grill some bread.
9. Season to taste and serve in bowls. Cut the bread into chunks and put them in the top of the soup. (See photo - apparently this is a standard way to serve French Onion Soup, though I have no idea what's wrong with the more traditional bread-by-the-plate method.)
By the way, since I've been so bad at updating this blog the last few months, for the new year I thought, "Why not start another blog as well? That's BOUND to make things better."
And thus it is: Vegan Three-Six-Five.
It's going to be about a possibly crazy mission to cook 365 different vegan recipes over the course of 2014. Since Mr N and I are not quite that amazing at creating recipes, they will be selected from a variety of locations. Original recipes will continue to be posted here.
Happy 2014!
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