Cheap Wine

Those of you who read my blog regularly will know there are things that I believe in spending money on, and things that I don’t.

For instance, I don’t think you should ever skimp when it comes to: American Apparel tights (yes, I’m obsessed), cardigans, gin, lingerie, perfume, and tea.

But, you can, and should, expect to economise on the following: handbags, shoes, costume jewellery, socks, sunglasses, and wine.

As the title of this post indicates, it is cheap wine with which I am concerned at present. I can, grudgingly, see the point in spending a couple more dollars on a bottle of wine that’s intended for drinking, particularly if the bottle is pretty and it’s a thanks-for-having-me present. There is no place, though, in my reality, for using expensive wine in cooking. Nor do I believe in blaming the wine if your bolognaise or bourguignon doesn’t turn out as well as you had hoped. You are the cook, you wield the wooden spoon, and, as such, it’s up to you, and not the ingredients, to make your food work.

This sounds a little harsh, but, really, it’s empowering. Too long have our food magazines promoted this ridiculous upper middle class idea of throwing fashionable, expensive 'good quality', pre-prepared ingredients together on a big white plate, and garnishing it with sea salt, as 'cooking'. That’s arranging, not cooking, and I find it hard to take seriously the credentials of a magazine when half of the dishes are of that ilk.

That’s not to say simplicity isn’t a virtue in the kitchen. On the contrary, what I love about cooking is how simple things – flour, water, salt, oil – can be transformed, through care and attention, into something so much greater than the sum of its parts – sourdough bread, for instance, is the result of these four things alone. It’s like Durkheimian mechanical solidarity on a plate, and it’s beautiful.

But back to the cheap wine.

I feel, after the above rant, that it’s only fair I share with you my favourite recipe for alchemically turning that half-used skanky bottle of red lurking at the back of the cupboard into something you can be truly happy to serve to your friends at a dinner party (and eat any leftovers while you do the dishes, listening to Cheap Wine by Cold Chisel, bathing in the sweetness of your irony).

With a little care and attention, and trust in your palette, you can get away with cheap wine. Which is a blessing, really, when you’ve spent all your money on tights (guilty as charged).

Cheap Wine Pears with Walnut Praline

Serves 4 (ish)

For the Pears
4 brown pears, peeled, halved, de-cored
Brown sugar – to start with, about ¼ cup, but you may need extra, depending on the wine
2 bruised cardoman pods
2 cloves
2 star anise
Nutmeg
Vanilla extract
Juice of an orange (and/or a strip of orange peel)
¾ of a bottle of cheap, skanky red wine (I normally have shiraz lying around, but you could use any red you have to hand)

For the Praline
¾ cup of walnuts
1 cup sugar
A little water

1) Preheat oven to 160 degrees.
2) Place the pears, sliced-side up, in a baking dish. Sprinkle with the brown sugar. Add the wine, the spices, vanilla and the orange juice.
3) Bake, turning every half hour or so, until tender. This will largely depend on how firm your pears are. I find that an hour and a half softens even the firmest of pears.
4) While you bake your pears, make the praline. In a small saucepan, place the sugar and a little water – I would probably say a few tablespoons – over a high heat. Boil the sugar and water until thick and amber-coloured.
5) Line a baking tray with baking paper. Spread walnuts out on the baking paper, and carefully pour over the toffee (remember, sugar burns HURT). While the toffee is still liquid, jiggle the sides of the baking paper to ensure that all the walnuts are somehow connected to the great land-mass of toffee. To paraphrase Donne, no walnut is an island. Place in freezer to chill.
6) Check your pears. They should be tender. Remove pears to an oven proof bowl (save time and washing up by using the bowl you intend to serve from) and place the poaching liquid into a small saucepan. Cover the pears with foil and return to the oven (dropped down to 100 degrees) to keep warm. If you are making this dish ahead of time, you can put the pears, at this stage, into the fridge, and just reheat them in a slow oven about a half hour before you want to serve them.
7) Taste test the poaching liquid. It’s here where you need to exercise your palette. Is the sauce too tart? Add some more brown sugar. Is the sauce too tannic? Add some orange zest and vanilla extract (I don’t know why this works but it does). Heat the poaching liquid, taste testing and adjusting regularly, over a high heat until it’s bubbling thickly and has a glassy sheen. Pour into some sort of serving vessel (I like using a dainty little milk jug, juxtaposing the wine-dark sauce, but then I can be a bit twee sometimes), and set aside.
8) By now, the praline should be completely set. Place into a large zip loc bag and bash with a rolling pin until the praline is roughly broken up – you want some power and some chunky toffee-nut pieces. Transfer to a pretty bowl to put on the table, so people can add extra praline to their pears if they so desire, or simply nibble on the chunky toffee-nut pieces as decorum levels take a nose dive (it’s after desert when the truth comes out, I tell you).
9) Serve the pears, sprinkled with a generous amount of praline and drizzled with your dark, rich, cheap wine sauce.

A Cup of Earl

‘A cup of Earl, darls?’ Clementine Kemp asks. I instantly relax, not only at the familiarity of our shared lexicon, but at the thought of a cup of Earl Grey, my favourite thing to drink, made just how I like it.

You are supposed to drink Earl Grey tea black, with a slice of lemon, and, maybe, some sugar. I drink my Earl Grey the way you are not supposed to. I like it medium-strong, with a decent splosh of milk, no sugar. In the words of the Prince song, CONTROVERSY.

It’s funny, the way that a particular beverage becomes part of the way you think about someone, a part of the way you understand their identity. Kitty Gilfeather, for instance, is a skinny flat white kind of girl. Jordan Hawthorne invariably orders a long black. MamaK likes her tea to be Dilmah, so strong you can stand a spoon in it, with skim milk and a sweetener.

I first drank Earl Grey staying at my grandparent’s house as a child. Picking, out of all the teabags in my grandmother’s cupboard, the one that smelt like the colour yellow, a smell I later found out was bergamot. I can’t remember developing a taste for Earl Grey black, so my grandmother must have added milk to my tea that first time I drank it, the way that you do for small children.

Try as I might (and I do try, on mornings when I’ve forgotten to buy a carton of moo juice and desperately need a cup of something warm in my hands while I get my head around the new day), Earl Grey tea, served as custom dictates, just doesn’t cut the mustard. My Earl has to have milk, and it has to be unsweetened.

It’s not Earl Grey how it’s supposed to be, but that’s why it’s my Earl. I wouldn’t want a cup of anything else.

Sunday Soup Sessions: South Beach Black Bean Soup

Sundays are the best days. I like Saturday, for sure, with its catch ups and outings and, more often than not, evening derring-do (last night a girlfriend and I took in some theatre. The show was called Naked Boys Singing. One does so love to support the arts).

Saturdays, though, carry the weight, or, more accurately, the burden, of expectation. They are, after all, the first day of the weekend, and weekends so often are hampered with great expectations for fitting in all the extra curriculars, pleasant or otherwise, that didn’t happen during the week.

Sundays are free from these expectations because, by Sunday morning, expectations have either been fulfilled or dashed (that genius outfit you spent all week planning either debuted spectacularly, or sits on the bedroom floor, a reject and a flop).

This gives the more highly evolved among us the opportunity to Be In The Moment (whatever that means, I am yet to find out). For those of us less evolved, Sundays present an irresistible invitation to undertake pleasurable little busy-nesses that didn’t quite warrant top Saturday billing, but are, nonetheless, important.

This, for me, usually involves making soup, the beauties of which are manifold.

Firstly, soup makes fantastic lunch food, and if you cook and portion it out on Sunday, you can have lunches ready made in your freezer for the rest of the week.

Secondly, soups are time consuming but low maintenance. You do need to be around (ish) for an hour or so to keep an eye on the stove, but you are free to engage in other busy-nesses that make Sundays so lovely (painting BOTH finger and toenails. Cleaning the shower while listening to Prince. Re reading Truman Capote. Trialing new eyeliner techniques in front of your freshly cleaned bathroom mirror – I finally got the knack of lining the inner rim. Subtle, yet effective. It’s my new favourite trick).

Thirdly, and finally, your neighbours are more likely to be home on Sunday, all the better to tease with the tantalising smells coming from your apartment. No, I’m not mean, but it is sometimes satisfying to know that that delicious garlic-onion-spices smell the whole neighbourhood is salivating over is all for me.

Bwahaha.

Today, I made South Beach Black Bean soup, adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How To Eat. I made this soup last year for Kitty Gillfeather and I to share one night, and, whilst it was Okay, it was not Omazing.

Never one to be defeated by a recipe, and with complete faith in the kitchen gospel according to Nigella, I attempted it again, this time with a couple of modifications.
I’m pleased to report that my faith in Nigella’s inherent rightness was rewarded, after a couple of hours of simmering, by a dark, deeply spiced, lime-spiky soup. The best kind.

Given its Cuban heritage, I feel it’s only appropriate that you eat a bowl of this with something rum-based to drink: a Cuba Libre, perhaps, or, if you’re a little out-of-left-field, like me, sarsaparilla and Bacardi over ice with a squeeze of lime.

Yet another reason why Sundays are the best day: they’re the only day when lunchtime drinking (infinitely more satisfying than evening drinking) is de rigueur. After all, we’ve got work in the morning…


South Beach Black Bean Soup (Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How To Eat)

(Makes three large portions)

200g black turtle beans
1 bay leaf
Olive Oil
1 red capsicum, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon dried oregano
Zest of one lime, plus extra limes to serve (allow one per person for citrus fiends like me)
Sugar, salt, pepper, to season
1 tablespoon dry sherry
Sour cream, sliced avocado, dried chilli flakes and/or spring onions and coriander, to serve.

1) Cover the beans and the bay leaf with a generous amount of water in a medium sized saucepan. Bring to the boil and keep at the boil, topping up with more water as needed, until beans are beginning to tenderise, but, still have quite a bit of bite.
2) Meanwhile, in your largest saucepan, heat the oil and add your finely chopped onion and capsicum. Cook over medium heat until translucent, which should take about ten minutes.
3) Add the garlic, cumin and oregano to the onion and capsicum and cook a further five minutes. The mixture should be starting to colour, which is good. You want this mixture caramelised, almost to the brink of burnt, for depth of flavour.
4) Hopefully, your beans will be crunchy-tender by this stage. If so, add them, and their cooking liquid, to the large pot, and bring to the boil. If your beans are not quite ready, remove the onion-capsicum mixture from the heat. Return to the stove when the beans are just about ready.
5) Cook at a high simmer until the beans are completely tender. Add in the sherry and lime zest, and season to taste. Nigella’s original recipe suggests using a whole tablespoon of salt (admittedly for a larger quantity of soup than my specifications), which sounds like a lot, but bean dishes do tend to need a lot of seasoning to taste of anything at all, so taste test thoroughly and often and salt accordingly.
6) Locate rum, chill glasses.
7) Spoon soup into bowls and serve, sprinkled with any, none, or all of the following: sour cream, sliced avocado, dried chilli flakes, finely sliced spring onions, coriander, and lime wedges to squeeze over the soup on the side.
8) Viva Nigella, Viva Soup Sessions, Viva Sundays.

A Week Full of Good Things.

Dumplings on Monday at lunchtime. Reminiscing with old colleagues about teaching, realising what I miss and what I don’t (I miss the students. I miss being in the classroom. I don’t miss marking).

Gin and tonics on Tuesday. In my track pants. Living the dream.

Laksa on Wednesday night. Feeling proud of my dear friend as she tackles her honours year with a smile. Glad that I can rely on her to share my all-in enthusiasm for jumbo combination laksa, extra tofu. Finishing an enormous bowl of piping hot broth, noodles, meat and vegetables, and feeling, in the words of my friend, like our tummies are smiling.

Koko Black on Thursday. Realising that my brother and his lovely girlfriend make infinitely better brownies than Koko Black. There must be a special ingredient that Koko is missing. Lapsing into an iced chocolate coma. Picking up some Easter treats and wondering how a chocolate bunny can cost $50, and how at least two people bought them while we waited to pay.

Ravioli on Good Friday. Talking, exchanging news, laughing, drinking cider and wine while eight of us kneaded, rolled, mixed, filled, pressed, cooked, and, eventually, ate, something wonderful we’d made, together.

Plums and figs, most likely the last of this almost-never-happened summer, on Saturday. The plums bought at Coles (still delicious), the figs, fresh from my parent’s garden, birds kept away from the ripening fruit by a netting and wire Taj Mahal my father built around the tree. Having to take breaks from The Hunger Games trilogy (so compelling, so distressing) to do mindless, comforting things, like cleaning my bathroom and hanging out washing. Sharing cup after cup of tea and swapping budget recipes with my lovely friend, and her growing baby bump, in the afternoon. Putting the two halves of my Saturday together late in the evening, keenly feeling the outrage of our luck that, unlike so many, our budget recipes, and my father’s self sufficiency, are about economy and pleasure in growing things ourselves, not survival for ourselves and our families.

This morning, pumpkin, sweet potato, carrot and ginger soup simmers on my stove, and Easter-spiced sourdough fruit loaf bakes in my oven. I stand in my kitchen and typing this as I listen to Kanye and Jay Z and let the smells of good soup and good bread curl through my apartment.

Tomorrow, my big little brother, his girlfriend, and my littlest brother will come over for a belated Easter breakfast and egg hunt. We will eat the bread that’s rising rapidly in my oven as I type this, drink pots of tea and coffee, make ham and cheese croissants with a truly disgusting amount of Jarlesberg, and collect handfuls of cheap chocolate wrapped in colourful foil. We will pool our chocolaty spoils on my dining room table and divide the eggs equally between us, because it’s what we’ve always done. We will Skype our parents to hear about late snow, Scottish breakfasts, and Easter service in my mother’s childhood church. And we will exchange assurances that we are well, safe, and fed, and that our weeks have been filled with good things.