So You Think You Can ... Drink

We all have our dirty pop secrets. I had a frightening moment recently when I realised I was enjoying Britney...non ironically.

This year I've decided to embrace my inner pop bitch, and boy does she like So You Think You Can Dance. Tonight is both the final show and debut of the SYTYCD Drinking Game. In celebration, I thought I'd post the rules here. Admittedly, they are still under development. But the golden rule seems to be - when it doubt, drink all the time.

Because I am a weak, weak woman, I plan on participating with Pimms and lemonade, a ladies drink of choice. Feel free to substitute any liquor you like.

The Rules

Opening Gambit:

If Bassingthwaite is wearing a one-shouldered monstrosity: drink

For every button Jason unnecessarily wears open to reveal his chest: drink

Bonnie is wearing hot pink: drink

Matt is wearing a hat: drink

Matt isn't wearing a hat: drink heavily


Everytime:

Someone says the word 'journey': drink

A judge says the word 'genre': drink

Someone uses the word 'chorie': drink

*You* use the word 'chorie': drink

You can't help but sympathetically chair dance: distract yourself and hopefully others around you by drinking.

Jason is a patronising bastard: drink

Bonnie opens her mouth; you'll probably just want to drink to drown out the inanity.

There is an accidental grope during a routine: drink

There is a not so accidental grope, at any given time: drink

Bassingthwaite can't keep her hands of the shiny, oiled up male dancers: drink

There is awkward product placement: drink


Super Bonus Round (shots x 2)

If someone cries....drink!

A judge hits on a contestant...drink!

Bassingthwaites stacks it in her ridiculous shoes...drink!

So you think you can dance? Maybe stop drinking.

Herby Pasta Salad (or, what to eat when you want to feel healthy but haven't been...)

This Easter long weekend was not, for me at least, one of virtue. Rather, it was expensive, involved all together too many pink mojitos, and resulted in a five star hangover that had me feeling sorry for myself well into sunday afternoon. I have often found myself wolfing down a fast food hamburger after a big night out, usually in an attempt to fill my churning stomach and fight off that nasty, empty hangover feeling that sadly often punctuates my weekends. Something greasy and cheesy generally hits the spot, although once the hangover has cleared and I'm stashing my oily fast food wrappers in the bottom of the bin, I'm always left feeling guilty, unhealthy, and usually pretty darn gross.

Enter my new favourite recipe! It combines two of my all time favourite ingredients: pasta and cheese - and both in liberal quantities - making it suitable hangover food, yet it also contains enough roughage to look and taste nutritious too. I'll admit it wasn't what I was craving as my headache slowly lifted last sunday evening, but I made up a big bowl full for lunch on monday. The fresh herby goodness that this dish is built on restored in me a certain healthy feeling (a feeling that I speculate was lost somewhere between my first glass of white on thursday evening and my fourth mojito in the early hours of Good Friday.) A healthy feeling... exactly what's lacking after a big weekend on the town. So with your wellbeing in mind, may I present:

Healthy Herb Salad
(or more truthfully, a salad to prepare when you want to feel healthy, but secretly crave big piles of cheese and carbohydrates)

What you will need:

• 1 1/2 cups of pasta, preferably something small like risoni, macaroni, or darling little pasta stars (as pictured)
• 1 bunch each of fresh dill, mint and basil (this seems like a strange combination of herbs, particularly if you don't like dill. I don't like dill, but I love this salad.)
• 200g brown lentils (tinned ones are fine if you can't be bothered with preparation of dried ones)
  
• 1 small red onion
• 200g feta cheese
• A generous handful of pitted black olives
• Two or three tablespoons of red wine vinegar (for a sort of dressing)
• One clove of garlic
  
• A little cracked pepper to taste
  

What you will need to do:

Preparing this meal is so simple that it almost doesn't require neatly dot-pointed steps, but I'll stick with clearly outlined instructions, just so my Inner Delia Smith (read: my inner obsessive-complusive) doesn't baulk at the sight of a disorganised recipe.

• Cook pasta, drain and set aside
• Boil lentils (unless you're using tinned ones) and set aside
  
• Roughly chop all herbs and throw them into a big salad bowl, removing any stalky bits
• Finely slice red onion, chop olives, crumble feta and add the lot to salad
• Stir through pasta and lentils, add red wine vinegar and crushed garlic clove and mix through, Season with a little pepper
• Serve warm or cold

This recipe was given to me by my sister, I think it was originally thought up by one of her clever friends. It's a delicious mix of heavy, filling comfort food and fresh, light salad. The dill isn't overpowering, but I think it adds a certain strength of flavour to the dish that the other herbs don't, and let's not forget: cheese and pasta. It's so darn easy, and it's definitely the sort of recipe that can be played around with. Try it with parsley if basil isn't your thing, or substitute the dill for something a little less powerful. Easy as pie, and it's a whole lot better for you than a cheeseburger.

Aside from a particular Simon and Garfunkel track, I can't come up with a herb themed musical tie in to end this post, so I'm going to finish up with these delightful new(ish) video releases from my two favourite New Pornographers. They're my musical food of choice, very good for your ears. I particularly love the new Neko clip, it's oh-so-pretty. Kinda like her.

The Palace at 4am (A.C. Newman)
People Got A Lotta Nerve (Neko Case)

I <3 Jamie, or, From Scratch Vegetable Curry

For years now I have been searching for the perfect recipe for a vegetable curry from scratch. This, my friends, is it. Thick, spicy (but not too spicy!), packed full of vegetables, and utterly satisfying. You will be eating this for breakfast, it’s that good. And I couldn’t have done it without Jamie Oliver. So instead of transcribing the first half of the recipe, I’m sending you to his website. Go, children, go!

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/veggies-and-sides/curry-base-sauce

I used hot paprika instead of mild, and ended up with a rather spicy version. If you don’t enjoy the burning, I’d recommend sticking to mild. I’d definitely not recommended testing how hot the so called ‘hot’ paprika is by eating some straight out of the packet. It’s hot.

Once you have your curry base, it’s time to add your vegetables. I decided on eggplant and zucchini (or aubergine and courgette, if you want to get french).*

Vegetable Curry

Make your curry base. Freeze half for later use, keep the other half in the saucepan over a low heat.

Cut up 3 small or 2 medium sized eggplants into pieces roughly 1 cm thick and 3cm square. Lay eggplant on tea towel and sprinkle over a generous amount of salt.

After about 20 minutes, flip the eggplant pieces and salt the other side. They should be sweating nicely. **

After another 20 minutes, rinse the eggplant thoroughly. Meanwhile, cut up two zucchini.

Fry zucchini in olive oil. After about ten minutes, add to the curry base where it will continue to cook.

Fry the eggplant in batches. You will need quite a lot of olive oil for this part.

Add eggplant to curry. Do not do what I did and adopt the ‘one for the curry, one for me’ approach to this part of the cooking process. Yes, fried eggplant is nearly the tastiest thing in the world, but this curry may just be better.

Cook for a further 10 - 20 minutes.

Serve with rice, or couscous, raita, or pappadums or any of the many other wonderful curry accompaniments. Personally I love couscous with a little butter stirred through it and raita.

This was a quite a time consuming process all up so I spent the time getting better acquainted with early nineties New Zealand band, The Chills. If you like eighties pop sensibilities with a health dose of existential angst, I would highly recommend them. They came to me via a friend of mine, and seeing as the theme of this post seems to be getting by with a little help, I thought I would post some more classic Aus and NZ bands I wouldn't have found on my own:

The Chills - Tied Up In Chain
The Verlaines – Death and the Maiden
The Triffids - The Seabirds

* It took me a long time to realise that you do not need to peel eggplant. In fact, with both eggplant and zucchini, pretty much all the goodness is in the skin! (The colour is where the vitamins live, that’s how I think about it.)

** Salting eggplant is a (mildly) contentious issue. Personally, I only do it if I’m frying it, as I think it gives it a much nicer texture.

My Town According To My Tummy

The lovely autumnal month of March 2009 marked the two year anniversary of my move down south to the fair city of Melbourne. In fact, the fifth day of March this year marked the precise day that I said goodbye to my friends and family, enjoyed a last lungful of crisp Canberra air, and then sped through the sky to Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport, trying not to cry into my handbag as I left my home of twenty years for the proverbial 'big smoke'.

Two years on, and I am absolutely in love with Melbourne, and so glad to have settled here. I can wander through the rabbit-warren like laneways of the CBD without fear of getting lost, I've stopped baulking when confused looking tourists ask for directions - map in hand. I've even adapted to the claustrophobic conditions on Melbourne's train network and in fact, during winter, I quite look forward to the snuggly morning train ride from my house just outside of the city into town. I finally feel like Melbourne is my home, and in celebration of that fact I'd like to share with you my three all time favourite culinary delights from around the city.



Pellegrini's Espresso Bar
66 Bourke Street, Melbourne City

My Dad recommended Pellegrini's as a place to go for excellent espresso coffee. He used to lunch here when he lived and worked in Melbourne a few years ago. The place is somewhat of a Melbourne institution. I don't think the decor has changed since it first opened it's doors over fifty years ago. It feels to me like a family kitchen, a place to feel very much at home. Mama Pellegrini always supplies a large hunk of fresh buttered bread with any order of pasta, and sometimes the coffee is free. Just because. I make a beeline for the place when I'm hungry for some homestyle Italian food. Either that or I'm just missing my own Mama...



Shanghai Village
112 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne City

My fellow blog-mistress and I stumbled into Shanghai Village quite by accident one night, with another couple of dear friends. The menu prices were - to us at least - disarmingly cheap, so working under the assumption that the dishes would be small portions, we ordered an embarrassing amount of food.

At Shanghai Village, a plate of 18 steamed vegetarian dumplings will set you back $6.50, and these are more than enough to feed two people if enjoyed with some rice and a beer. Between four of us we ordered about fifty dumplings, fried spring onion pancakes, some sort of sweet pumpkin dish, and two plates of rice. Tara was so embarrassed at the sheer amount of food at the table that she kept piling it onto one central plate in a futile attempt to make us look a little less gluttonous. Needless to say we ate it all. The dumplings at this place are delicious. Also, the walls are bright pink, the chopsticks are orange, and the jasmine tea is free. The staff don't care if you pour from a goon bag at the table, and the food is ridiculously cheap. It is definitely one of my favourite spots to eat, particularly when I don't have much in the bank. Student heaven.



Madame Brussels
59-63 Bourke Street, Melbourne City

Madame Brussels isn't strictly a restaurant, and it's not strictly a bar. It is a self described 'Rather Fancy Terrace and Public House' named after the brothel Madam who used to run her business from the same end of town during the 1880's. Decked out in pretty pinks and greens, and featuring some very sexy bar staff attired in 1950's style tennis uniforms, Madam Brussels makes me feel like a high society lady every time I visit.

Madame Brussels is the place I seek out when in need of light meal with my booze. Cheese platters, home made paté, scones, and some damn tasty sausage rolls are on the menu. The drinks list is impressive, and the cocktails are amazing. I've frequently coloured my cheeks with the chilled pimms and blood orange punch in the summer, and the warm spiced rum that's on offer in the colder months is delicious too. The place is simply adorable, the view from the balcony out towards the Victorian Parliament is gorgeous, and lets not forget... hot bar staff in tennis uniforms. I challenge any lady to resist Madame Brussels' charms.

So there you have it. In a city that boasts an almost ludicrous number of restaurants, bars and cafes, here are my three favourites. The last two years I've spent down here in Melbourne have been punctuated by deligtful little discoveries such as these three spots. They're each worth a visit, they won't break your budget, and yout tastebuds and tummy will not be disappointed.

My Blueberry Boat (muffins)

Breakfast is probably my favourite meal of the day.

Morning is probably my least favourite time of day. Wake me up in the morning and I have been known to yell, throw things, tell you your mother would be disappointed in you, and later have no memory of the event. Suffice to say I am not a happy lassie before noon. So often it is with confusion and despair that I stare into the fridge of a morning, wanting something delicious but lacking the mental faculties and emotional fortitude to choose.

We once hypothesised a ‘What Should Tara Have for Breakfast’ website, where people could make these decisions for me. I still dream of it longingly.

Fresh, tasty, and easy – these are my breakfast requirements. I love eggs, but breakfast must be quick, otherwise more often than not I will choose a delicious cooked breakfast over a 9am lecture. For the weekday rush, these blueberry muffins are a real treat.

What You Will Need

1 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
A little bit less than 3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
80 ml milk
80 ml vegetable oil
1 - 2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)

For the topping:

1 tbsp butter
3 tbs white sugar
2 tbs flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon


What You Will Need to Do

• Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C. Line muffin tin with...muffin liners? Patty tins? You know what I mean! I got ten muffins from this batch.

• Sift flour and baking powder together, mix with sugar.

• Combine egg and oil in a cup measure, top up with milk to make it one cup (roughly 80 mls).

• Before you mix wet and dry ingredients, it's time to make your topping. Rub together butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon until crumbly. You might have to tweak the proportions slightly - I always do.
  

• Mix wet and dry ingredients together - gently. Fold in blueberries. Do *not* over mix - your muffins will be tough! No one likes tough muffins! Unless it's a euphemism for sassy old ladies.
  

• Fill the muffin cups, and top with crumbly sugar mix.

• Place in oven, cook for around 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
  

• Enjoy early Monday morning with a strong cup of coffee and the following tracks on the headphones:

Blueberry Boat – The Fiery Furnaces
TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
Animal Collective - The Purple Bottle (one of my favourite songs ever, and perfect for that bus/car/bike ride to work)

Chocapocalypse!

Recently, I volunteered my services to this motley crew of designers, and signed myself up for what I'm sure, if required, is going to be a long few days of baking, decorating, and - let's face it - eating, in preparation for a delicious little fundraiser. In an attempt to raise some money in support of the first ever issue of their new publication, the kids over at Meta have determined that perhaps the most effective way of extracting money from their fellow students is by offering them something appetising, affordable, and altogether eye-catching to snack on between lectures, which is why in the coming days, and depending on other generous offers of funding, I may be called upon to bake a helluva lot of cupcakes.

For a few days now I've been bursting with enthusiasm at the idea of spending my evenings elbow deep in chocolate chips and icing sugar, but my enthisiasm changed to concern when the boy turned to me last night and posed the question "So these cupcakes - are they going to taste any good?" I realised I hadn't even decided upon a recipe yet, and in pursuit of an answer to my boyfriend's pointed question, I set about making a trial batch of enticing, sugary little offerings. After all, If I am called upon to provide baked goods for this fundraiser, I aim to be prepared! I'm not a big fan of standard vanilla cupcakes, so I decided upon a chocolate cupcake recipe that took my fancy. It originally appeared in Delicious magazine, and a torn out page bearing the recipe has been sitting in my pantry since 2005 waiting to be tried out. I whipped up a quick dozen and the things were so damned good that I have decided to share the recipe with you all. Immediately. So, without further ado:

The Best Chocolate Cupcakes in the World, or Chocapocalypse.
(Adapted from Delicious magazine, September 2005)


What you will need:

- First and foremost, 450g of good quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces
- 250ml thickened cream
- 5 eggs
- 3/4 cup caster sugar
- 1 cup plain flour
- 1 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- Just a splash of brandy (optional)

What you will need to do:

- Take a moment to come to terms with just how bad for you this recipe actually is. These things are delicious, and I daresay you will have a hard time stopping at just one, so a quick mental preparation at the outset may save you a horrendous case of the guilts further down the track. These cupcakes are fatty, they are sugary, you are going to put them in your mouth. Ok, now for the fun part.

- Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius and line your muffin tin with patty pans.

- Place cream and chocolate in a saucepan, and stir over a very low heat until the mixture is smooth. Set aside to cool slightly.

- In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar together. The recipe advises that your eggy, sugary mix should "turn pale and double in volume" but as my electric beaters are currently out of action, I just beat them together with a whisk until they went a little fluffy. Things panned out just fine, so the doubling in volume is not necessary. (However, attempting this with a whisk may burn a few calories which - let's face it - can't hurt...)

- Sift in the flour, cocoa and baking powder, and pour over the cooled chocolate / cream mix. At this point I added a generous splash of brandy, because I like my cupcakes to taste of alcohol fuelled debauchery. (The recipe doesn't call for this alcoholic addition, but I think it adds a richness to the flavour without upping the sweetness.) Stir to combine.

- Divide the mixture between your patty pans, and bake for 15-20 minutes, during which time you should probably leave your kitchen, as the cooking smells are so overwhelmingly chocolatey you may resort to snacking on any leftover chocolate bits to quell your cravings, not leaving any room for the cupcakes themselves.

- Once your cupcakes are passing the age old skewer test, remove them from the oven and set aside to cool slightly before serving. Enjoy with a strong cup of coffee, and a burgeoning feeling that you don't give a shit how bad for you your cupcakes really are, the prospect of rapid weight gain just isn't bad enough to make you want to miss out on all that chocolate.

The original recipe actually includes a chocolate sauce for serving (100g dark chocolate and 1/3 cup of cream, melted together) but these cupcakes are rich enough as it is, I mean they are more like individual mudcakes, and I don't think smothering them with extra chocolate is really necessary. I served mine dusted with a little icing sugar, and I also iced a couple to see how they'll look, all dressed up and ready for the fundraiser. The icing makes them extremely sweet, but they look lovely, right?


I think it must be some sort of throwback to the children's birthday parties of years past, but I swear I will eat just about anything if it comes with pink icing and sprinkles. I'm already aware that this same strange compulsion applies to my two housemates, and I speculate the reach of this sprinkle-loving phenomenon extends beyond our household too. I mean how can you refuse a foodstuff that's just so damn cute?

And speaking of cute, check out these knitted delights that the boy gave to me as a part of my birthday present:


If you're interested in knitted incarnations of baked goods, and all sorts of other lovely things, check out Larkmade.com. All their stuff is made in accordance with fair trade practices, not to mention it is all absolutely adoreable.

And finally, something sweet to listen to:

Bandit Queen by Colin Meloy (Live)
Scythian Empires by Andrew Bird
Leaves that are Green by Simon and Garfunkel

The Jammening*

We'd been living in our new little rental place for a few months when spring hit and suddenly, we were drowning in blossoms. So it shouldn't have been a surprise when, a couple of months later, we discovered seven of our trees were bearing fruit. For someone with a child's grasp of botany, however, it was, and I couldn't stop myself from taking roughly 8 million photos.



Our felicity was compounded when we realised that not only did the fruit look great, it tasted delicious. I cannot now remember how many days I came home from work only to stop before I got in the door and gorge on sun warmed plums, straight from the tree to my mouth. And much like this farmer I was loving the fact that it was free. Bliss.


It all got a bit too much, and realising that I and my housemates couldn't possibly eat the nearly seven kilos I picked from one tree in one day in a bout of plum madness (and also realising that my friends had started to look slightly terrified when I kept trying to offload plums), I stored them in the freezer and made plans for jam. Enter jam queen, fellow Morrissey lover, and ridiculously talented illustrator, Alice.

According to Alice Jam (plum)

What You Will Need
(This is the only recipe I've made that requires more apparatus than ingredients.)

• Knife

• Large plastic or ceramic bowl

• Large saucepan

• Glass jars

• Ladle

• Sugar

• Plums

You will need plums

What You Will Need to Do:

Day One, or, The Four C's of Jamming

• Check your fruit for gross bits (cut off if needed), and then wash and weigh them. Alice suggested that for every kilo of plums, you need roughly 3 cups of sugar. We ended up with about three kilos, and about seven cups, allowing for the fact that stoning the plums would reduce the weigh somewhat. Chop your plums up, leave the skin on, remove the stones. We hypothesised that it doesn't really matter if a couple of the stones get in – after all, that's where the pectin lives – as long as you get them out again before jarring your jam.

• Chuck all your plum bits into a non-metallic bowl and mix in with sugar. It should be wet and oozy when combined.
  

Wet and Oozy

• Cover with cling film and refrigerate overnight.

Day Two, or, I Couldn't Figure Out Alliteration For This One, Sorry

• Remove bowl from fridge, and poke fruity goo with a wooden spoon. Marvel that the nascent jam looks so much like alien slime and realise that even if this jam caper goes horribly wrong, you could probably make a living selling this stuff to SFX companies.
  

• Put goo in a large saucepan over a medium heat

• Put a clean ceramic plate in the fridge. This will come in handy later.

• Stir, adjust temperature, stir some more. This will likely go on for about an hour: your jam (for this is what it is at this point) will have reduced by about a third. Be careful you don't get scalded at this point. Boiling jam is the hottest substance known to man!

Tastier and Hotter than Lava

• This is where the cold plate comes in handy (you were wondering, right?). Put a blob of jam on the plate: place the plate in the fridge. After five or so minutes remove from the fridge, and eat. If this is the consistency you would like your jam, you're done. You don't want to cook it to long – you won't be able to get it out of the jar and that would be tragic.

Part Three: Cooking Your Jars.

• Meanwhile, I hope you've been collecting glass jars. Preheat your oven to around 150 degrees.

• Soak jars and lids in very, very hot water, and scrub labels off. Clean the lids thoroughly and set aside to dry – they won't be going in the oven.

• Place jars on a tray and in a preheated oven. Turn oven off. The heat from the oven will sterilize the jars in about ten minutes.

• Ladle your jam into hot, clean jars. You will probably want gloves, tongs and friends around to help with this bit, it gets a bit awkward.

• Screw lids on tightly: press the buttons on the lids down. Now, I don't know if this is true, but Dr Dean says it is. There is always a risk that jam will go bad if the jars aren't properly sterilized – set jam aside for a few days, and if your lids don't pop up you're ready to go!

• Make some scones and eat a whole jar of jam with a friend of yours. You will feel a little bit sick, but it will be delicious.

Fruit Goes In, Jam Comes Out

Listen to some happy jam making songs. I recommend:

Jogging Gorgeous Summer by Islands
A Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill by Jens Lekman
The New Cobweb Summer by Lambchop

*Alice not only helped with the jam, but provided the title to this blog.