Paul is in the other room writing a freelance article about some sort of car thing. He hasn’t written anything for money (or equivalent rewards) for a long time now, and a couple of hours ago I heard the plaintive cry of “Writing is hard!” coming from his general direction.
I just attended two weeks worth of Professional Practice seminars for my MFA, and now have three weeks to write 2000 words about myself for assessment. As a professional writer, I agree that it is hard, so I decided to procrastinate practice with this blog post about cake.
At the end of the seminars, we had a pot luck lunch. Although I’m not actually vegan, I do cook vegan meals most of the time, especially when I have to cook for others. I get a slightly roguish thrill from proving people wrong through deliciousness.
It infuriates me when people insist that you need to use eggs and dairy when baking. Unless you are baking lemon meringue pie, which is indeed a noble pursuit, you do not need to bake with eggs. Take this date cake for example. More traditional date loaves involve the soaking of the dates in bicarb soda and water, but I wanted a more cakey number with flecks of date that resemble chocolate chips.
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Preheat your oven to 180ºC. Grease and line two loaf tins.
Finely chop 40 pitted dates and soak them in 1.5 cups of coconut cream with a splash of apple cider vinegar.
In a separate bowl, cream 1 cup of vegan margarine with 1.5 cups of sugar. Beat in a dash of vanilla essence, 2 cups of sifted self-raising flour and a pinch of salt. The mixture will be very dry at this point.
Beat in the coconut cream and dates until you have a thick batter. Divide this into the tins then bake for 45-50 minutes, or until your knife comes out clean in a poking test (heh…). Allow it to cool (hah!) then enjoy its moist deliciousness and the pretence that it’s healthy due to the lack of dairy and inclusion of fruit.
Yesterday I got news that my friend Alex and his partner, Rebecca, had welcomed a little boy into their family. Now, I knew they were having a baby, knew when it was due, but still somehow had only imagined making a present.
It turns out I can make one of these in half a day. Hooray! It’s the Umbilical Cord Hat from the first Stitch ‘n Bitch book, with 8 extra stitches and as such, an extra lot of decreases to make up for the thinner yarn and smaller needles. Rav details here. I hope it’s still cold enough in China for a tiny new babby to wear a lovely wool hat.
It is getting colder here. And when I was choosing a yarn to knit the hat with, I found two bags of ‘Summer’ wool/silk roving from the Melbourne Handweavers and Spinners Guild in my stash. What better time to start spinning it than just after summer’s end, on the weekend of constant storming when we get hailstones the size of golfballs?
Sometime last year I paid the Melbourne Spinners and Weavers Guild a visit. I accidentally bought a four shaft table loom while I was there, and also made off with some 40% silk/60% merino roving blends, dyed in the most beautiful colours. I started spinning the one named Spring into singles before we moved. Then, well, we moved, and everything else stopped.
Since setting up my studio here, Spring has Sprung. I have two skeins that I plied with themselves, and one plied with a single of white merino. It’s just. So. Beautiful. I can’t wait to see how Summer spins up.
Another damn fine slow cooker recipe from Teh Internets. I did want to make something tasty, but I admit my main goal in making Unbeef Stew was to take a better photograph than all the other horrible looking ones on the recipe page. Stew is not the most photogenic thing in the world.
I didn’t stray too far from the recipe this time — just added a little less cornstarch, threw in some red wine and honey, and bought some good quality Asian Grocery “dried” tofu (you’ll still find this in the fridge section, it’s just a lot firmer than regular tofu) instead of bothering with the freezing and liquid draining malarkey. Also, I didn’t peel my potatoes or seed my tomato. I’m such a rebel.
Occasionally people ask me for my recipes, and I always promise I’ll write them down and email them to those people. I never do. It’s a major source of guilt. But now that I have a good kitchen to cook in and a table that isn’t permanently used as bench space, I can take (what I hope to be) nice, appetising photographs of my meals. And I’ve found that when I do this, I’m more likely to write the recipe here on the blog. So, without further ado, here’s another fruity curry.
Six or so years ago, I was painting and watching Jamie Oliver on the tellie when he cooked this. I scrounged around and managed to write it down on a scrap of newspaper I was using as a dropsheet. Probably with a pastel. It doesn’t look like much, but trust me when I say it’s fan-freaking-tastic.
Cook around two cups of basmati rice. In another pan, heat a tablespoon of mustard seeds in 1-2 tablespoons of sunflower or coconut oil. Bash a few cardamom pods in your mortar and pestle and add this to the pan with a small handful of curry leaves. Toss everything round a bit, then peel and slice a knob of ginger and add it to the mix. Grind up a teaspoon of cumin seeds and throw them into the pan with half a teaspoon of chilli powder, followed by one teaspoon of turmeric. Cut a fresh pineapple into large chunks and stir it through the mix. Slice a banana on an angle and add (the recipe calls for a plantain, but I can never find these in Melbourne). Pour in a can of coconut milk, season with salt and simmer until it’s ready. Serve over the basmati rice. Omnomnom.
