The garden ruin looks biblical to a Catholic so I’m doing reruns of past sins to discover which one is responsible for the crop failure. I’m tossing up between assisting in the theft of a king-sized bar of Caramello chocolate from the Big S supermarket (even though I did follow Father Duggan’s advice and purchase a bar and replace it on the supermarket shelf a week later); and putting on my big sister’s glamorous shoes and dancing up and down the driveway Shirley Temple-style (they had heel and toe plates so the sound they made was hypnotic) despite being told to STAY AWAY FROM HER THINGS AND OUT OF HER ROOM! And if either of these sins was punishable by crop failure then I’ve finally discovered the real reason for the Irish Potato Famine because God only knows how many disobedient children there were in Ireland in 1845.

Saturday night Mr Scott and I returned from a tasty meal out and I don’t know if it was too much wasabi or possibly some MSG sneaked into one of the dishes but I had an unexpected rush of enthusiasm and decided that around midnight is the ideal moment to make tomato relish. As you can see by the recipe at the end of the page one starts by chopping the tomatoes and onions and sprinkling them with salt to draw out the moisture.

I think the operative word here is sprinkle rather than dredge and I’m just warning you in advance that my relish will not get a tick from the Heart Foundation. It’s not the recipe which is to blame as much as my interpretation of it along with a hand rendered less responsive by a couple of wines.

Chopping the tomatoes went well though there were moments when I felt like chucking it all in and heading off to bed not so much through fatigue as boredom. But gosh, don’t things come to life when you start on the onions? December and January the onions were rubbish. They were soft and green inside and smelt like swamp water. Personally, I feel they were picked too early and not left out to harden-the-whatever up but don’t take this as gospel for I’m not one who knows my onions. But I do know that they have improved at last and so it was with a bit of trepidation that I moved to stage two of the recipe … chopping the onions.

I’m no ninja-knife person when it comes to chopping and slicing so my lack of speed meant I was positioned over the onions for longer than was comfortable for my eyes. And I know there are 20 different ways supposed to prevent crying over the onions but I have not found a method which actually works.

Until now.

Blame it on the alcohol if you wish but part way through Onion Number One, with a face covered in tears, I had an epiphany. I went to the bathroom, washed my face and rinsed and dried my eyes then I PUT ON MY SWIMMING GOGGLES! Internet … it works! Absolutely no more eye irritation. And then because I wasn’t having quite enough fun, I put my swimming cap on, too. Finally I finished the onions while softly humming lullabies and thinking about little lambs skipping through sun-filled meadows and all was right with the world.

Next day I drained off the water and continued to make relish.

This tomato relish recipe comes out of the universe and into your kitchens via my very wonderful friend Morag, who made a triumphant batch of relish last summer. I’m sorry my first effort hasn’t quite made the grade but it was all worth it to discover the solution to onion-eye-cry.

So grab your tomatoes, onions, swimming goggles and (optional) cap and get chopping.

TOMATO RELISH

6lb/3kg tomatoes

2lb/1kg onions

2lb/1kg sugar

8 small chillies

2 cups malt vinegar

3-4 tablespoons of cornflour

3 tablespoons of curry powder

2 tablespoons of salt

2 teaspoons mustard powder

METHOD

• Cut up tomatoes and onions, sprinkle with salt and leave overnight.
• Pour off liquid and add the toms/onions to a large pot. Barely cover with vinegar (about 2 cups). Put on heat, add sugar and chillies and boil for half an hour.
• Mix cornflour, curry powder and mustard powder in a little vinegar (or water if your pot mix has become a bit spicy) to a smooth paste.
• After tomatoes have boiled half an hour, add the paste, boil to thicken then bottle in sterilised jars.

WARNINGS

Don’t be too heavy-handed with the salt at number one. Taste the relish before adding any more salt. Actually, I’ve just gone back over my recipe notes and realised there is no place for adding more salt. I think the 2 tablespoons in the ingredients list is for sprinkling over the toms/onions right at the beginning. I got that completely wrong but it was difficult to read through the swimming goggles.

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Dad's beans should look like this.

The weather stayed cold for a long while after I planted. And there was a lack of rain. This is the beach garden so it is fairly untended and just has to get on once the planting is done. The beans were slow to start and then remained quite yellow in the leaf department. There didn’t appear to be a lot of nitrogen-fixing going on. Even Mr Scott noticed there was something amiss when one morning he announced: “There’s something amiss with those beans.” But I’m an optimist and felt things would right themselves. By the time I realised the beans weren’t righting themselves, it was a bit late. The yield was down about 80% and I’ve left the remainder to seed.

For I also have scarlet runners.

And they are a triumph!

They, too, were slow to start but suddenly they kicked into overdrive and reached for the sky. Like Jack’s beanstalk they grew and they grew and, goddammit, they were going to find that giant. Along the way they flowered and entertained fat bumble bees and hungry honey bees and were soon producing an overwhelming number of beans. Much of the crop is out of the reach of even the tall Mr Scott so we’re going to hire a helicopter and winch someone down to do the rest of the picking. Gathering a trug-full daily has enabled me to share bean love about the bay (and I won’t even talk about the zucchinis!).

Image of my scarlet runner beans captured
by the Hubble telescope which orbits
366 miles/589 kilometres above Earth. 

Yesterday I spent the morning blanching and freezing beans and to make it sexy, I frenched them first. I performed the usual internet search to make sure I was using the correct process (because it’s just possible blanching involves more than a simmer then an icy plunge) and it was during this search that I discovered you can eat the scarlet runner flowers! Who knew?

Yes, I can hear some of you saying “Daft bint … no flowers, no beans!” but, reader, I have been blessed. I have so many beans I can sacrifice a few flowers to make the world’s most twee salad.

So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to The World’s Most Twee Salad. Sadly it was not a photogenic dish so you’ll just have to believe me that I made it, ate it and it was good.

I cooked up some amaranth, quinoa and lentils (no, I was not jet-propelled on this morning’s run, but thanks for your concern). To this I added cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, feta, red onion, scarlet runner beans (frenched), a few spinach and miscellaneous salad leaves (and probably some weeds because I’m not entirely sure what is what in that part of the garden) and parsley, mint and basil. Drizzle with olive oil and a squirt of lemon juice then GARNISH WITH SCARLET RUNNER FLOWERS!

It would have been as twee as four Beswick ducks flying up the wall if it weren’t for the ancient grains and lentils which had made the entire creation a bit brown. It’s just my opinion but I think brown food only starts to look good in a photo if it involves chocolate. Anyway, next time you make a salad, go for glory and throw a few scarlet runner flowers over the top and have a very hippy day.

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Eventually I settled on a recipe and then, in honour of my dear mother, I faffed about with it a bit though I promise I did not add anything weird like coconut. Or curry powder.

The result was not so much a triumph as it was a good, honest pudding suitable for an entry in a Comfort Food Wiki, or as a carbo-loading dish for an extreme runner on the eve of an Ultramarathon.

Without further ado, internet, I’d like to introduce you to Rhubarb Rumble…

INGREDIENTS

· 3 cups of chopped rhubarb or make up with other fruit (I had minimal rhubarb [sister, that plant needs fertiliser] but when combined with the minimal peaches and minimal apples I also nearly didn’t have, I discovered I’d completed 3 cups of fruit … and it was good).

· ¾ cup of brown sugar

· 4tbsp of melted butter (a silly measurement, so I’d just melt a lump then use a tablespoon to measure it out)

· 2 eggs lightly beaten

· ½ cup of milk

· 1 ½ cups of flour

· 2 tsp baking powder

· 1 tsp vanilla essence

· 1 cup of caster sugar

· Extra butter for greasing dish

METHOD:
1. Chop up your fruit into bite-sized chunks and place in a bowl with the brown sugar. Mix it around and leave it for a bit so that the juices run a little and you get a syrup thing going on. This might not be vital at all but it is what I did and I guess I left it about an hour by the time I ran up and down the road looking for someone who could help out with caster sugar.

2. In a large enough bowl (I can’t see into your kitchen so I can’t be any more precise than that) combine 3 tbsp of butter, the eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, vanilla essence and caster sugar (just use plain white sugar if your neighbours don’t have caster sugar) and keep mixing until you get a smooth batter. To be honest, I had to add a bit more milk at this stage but just see how you go.

3. Grease a baking dish – I used a 2lt Pyrex dish – with some butter, or your favourite grease.

4. Add the fruit mix and spread it around sensibly.

5. Spoon the batter over the top of the fruit then drizzle over a bit of the remaining melted butter – if you have some. I don’t think the extra melted butter is that important, but I had some left so that’s what I did. Bake in a 350/180 oven for about 40 minutes.

6. Serve warm with cream, or ice-cream or custard or what-have-you.

 Spread fruit around dish in a sensible manner.

Make a general mess of the kitchen bench and hope
that Edmonds love it so much they offer to
sponsor your blog.

Allow special rat catching dog to lick the bowls.

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It’s hard to convince New Zealanders that cornbread is a top idea in the first place. It’s harder to make them believe in the dish on an evening when the temperature was up in the mid-20s, humidity and mosquitoes had that swamp thing going on and all you really felt like was something chilled … like beer, and maybe a crisp salad. But hey, Internet, I promised you I’d make the cornbread and make it I did.

It was simple to make, once I’d arrived beyond the point where I gagged like crazy when adding the buttermilk (it’s the plop-plop-plop of lumpy milky that gets me going). And I was pleased to be doing something useful with that can of Watties creamed corn that had once again made its way to the front of the pantry.

I have to be honest and tell you that after placing the skillet in the oven I prayed fervently that, when cooked, the cornbread would reveal in its top crust the image of President Barack Obama himself. At the least I was going to sell it on eBay, but at the most my little old oven with its Morris Minor 1000 switch arrangement, circa 1970, would become a place of pilgrimage for all the President’s supporters.

I’m thinking a lot about cornbread with an image that WEEPS WHEN YOU PLAY STEVIE WONDER ON THE STEREO.

I’m thinking about merchandise and fame. President Obama has many fans. Do the math! I’m a guest at the White House and I’m doing Oprah. 

You know what’s coming, don’t you?

I opened the oven. In fact, I opened it a couple of times during cooking and therein may lie the problem. But I was so sure there was a face happening on the top of that cornbread that I was doing jigs and reels alone in the kitchen until cooking time was up and I could officially open that oven door. I did, and then I closed it again.

There was a face on the top of the cornbread all right. But it was the image of Joseph Carey Merrick, the Englishman who became known as THE ELEPHANT MAN.

Deflated just doesn’t do justice to the way I was feeling when I had to confess to Mr Scott that 2009 wasn’t going to be the year I made us rich with Weeping Cornbread and Obama Sightings but we’re thinking of renaming the recipe Elephant Bread and using it for a zoo fundraiser.

The taste test, you ask? Pretend that my mother made you a scone and for some reason she not only chose to put creamed sweetcorn in it but she waited a day before giving it to you. It needs beer.

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Recently I found last year’s tin of creamed corn and realised it had to be eaten before a second tin arrived which would make me look like some sort of creamed corn hoarder. Really, inside a toasted sandwich is about as excited as I can get about this product but, believe me, my excitement is palpable compared with the enthusiasm Watties exhibits when it comes to its “Pick of the Crop” cream style corn.

You can gauge how a company feels about a product by the way it is presented in the serving suggestion area on the label. When it comes to creamed corn, the Watties product managers came up with the truly imaginative idea of … PUTTING IT IN A BOWL AND SPILLING SOME ON THE TABLE.

Guys, there’s a bit of competition out there in the supermarket canned vege aisles so if you can’t get excited enough about creamed corn to at least add a sprig of parsley before photographing it for the serving suggestion, why would you expect us to buy it?

So I thought let’s help Watties show its creamed corn some love by coming up with our own serving suggestions. I’ll kick off but, please, feel free to send in your own creations.

1. Obviously creamed corn toasted sandwiches with the corn, cheese and maybe a herb or two, possibly chives and a bit of chilli? If you use Vogels bread and make it really buttery then cook it slow-in-the-pan, the outcome is a toasted sandwich that is stunningly crispy and delicious and completely negates the National Heart Foundation’s approval tick won by the creamed corn product. When you sit down to eat be sure to place a large tea towel on your lap because the filling stays piping hot for about an hour and always slips out of the sandwich.
2. If you have a day ahead filled with activities like wrestling wild pigs, why not start with a hearty breakfast of creamed corn on toast with bacon, eggs, tomatoes, etc?
3. Creamed cornbread or, as we like to call it, Obama Inauguration Cornbread .

Sticking with Heinz Watties for a moment, I’d like to share a little family story with you. Many years ago, possibly nearly 30, a grandfather and his grandson of about four years of age were walking along sharing wisdom and stretching truth when the grandson asked if he could have lunch with his granddad. Granddad said that would be fine and asked the young lad what he would like for his lunch. The conversation went very much like this:

GRANDSON: Can I come to your house for lunch, Grandad?
GRANDDAD: Of course you can. What would you like to eat?
GRANDSON: Wormies.
GRANDDAD: Wormies?
GRANDSON: Yep.
GRANDDAD: What are wormies?
GRANDSON: You know, wormies, Granddad. They be orange, they be dead and they be in a can.
Ahh, thought Granddad, he wants spaghetti on toast.

© Granddad and Rhys

That’s a bit of brand love for you, Mr Wattie.

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Ingredients
2 cups of yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking  powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 cup of (Watties?) creamed corn
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Method
Preheat oven to 220°C/425°F (hot, eh?)

Place a 25cm/10in cast-iron skillet into the oven.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a bowl, making sure they are well combined: cornmeal, salt, sugar, baking powder and baking soda.

In a large bowl unite the buttermilk and eggs then introduce the creamed corn and whisk to thoroughly combine.

Mix the dry ingredients into the buttermilk concoction. Add more buttermilk if the batter is too thick and won’t pour.

Carefully put the vegetable oil in the heated cast-iron skillet, giving it a bit of a swirl. Pour the batter into the skillet. Bake until the cornbread is golden brown and springs back when touched – about 20 minutes.

Grab some friends and serve up the Obama Inauguration Cornbread with bowls of beans or hot chilli, a cold Epic beer and a few cowboy jokes.

… And just as soon as I’ve baked me this bread, this post will be served up with pictures!

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A couple of years ago I decided that when you have a lemon glut you should make limoncello. But not for me the old cheat’s way of simply throwing a bit of lemon skin into a bottle of vodka and letting it sit for two weeks. No, I trawled the interweb and found what I felt to be the most authentic limoncello recipe available.

Basically it started with ROCKET FUEL FROM A SECRET SOURCE and went from there, for months. Months of turning and scooping and filtering and attracting swarms of bees when it came time to add the syrup.

At its first tasting it drew comments like: “Gawwwdd, it’s like paint stripper.” Even diluted it had that hint-of-Meremere-dragstrip tang that grabbed you by the throat and squeezed so hard your eyes popped, your ears smoked and your nose bled intermittently for the next five days. The most fervent of my boozy friends would do that quick hand-over-glass gesture when I came around with the bottle to top them up. When everyone had left I found shot glasses, still full, hidden behind pot plants.

I can find only one person – an American friend who had other Americans staying for a summer holiday – who actually admitted finishing the entire bottle I had gifted them before their road trip around the South Island. Granted they were trapped in the middle of nowhere, and the moon was full. Granted also, my friend had told a small porky about limoncello being the traditional bevvie of the tangata whenua so that the tourists would have felt churlish to have refused a tipple. You could blame it on the scenery and solitude, but they finished their bottle, then I believe they took their clothes off and painted each other with volcanic mud. At other friends’ houses, the less loyal of those I know, I see the gifted limoncello lurking in the back of their booze cupboards. They’re too frightened for their pipes to even tip it down the sink.

I’m sure all would have been well, or at least a bit better, had I left the recipe alone. But, like Colonel Sanders, I had to keep adding those herbs and spices. I do swear, though, that I DID NOT PUT HABANERO CHILLIES in it.

A couple of years on and the brew has matured. I still have several bottles of the golden elixir just begging to be used so I made a limoncello-and-blueberry trifle the other day that was honestly a triumph. I shall make it again, soon, and this time I’ll take a great big photo and pop it up on Foghorn so you can drool into your keyboard and lick your monitor when your colleagues aren’t watching.

That’s a quarter of a litre gone and just a few litres left.

And, finally, we arrive at the point of the story: the dried-fruit-and-booze part.

I was talking to my sister, who’s not shy around the bottle (a family trait). We were mulling over the idea of soaking something in the limoncello and she thought figs. I’m only telling you this so that when tasting time comes and guests start spitting figs into the garden we’ll all remember who’s to blame. Last night I did a jar of Figs-in-Limoncello and they sit in the fridge like a Hunterian exhibit of dehydrated goats’ gonads aged in formaldehyde, but I’m sure they’ll taste better (or bitter).

The figs may become a sensation but what I’d really like is something special for Mr Scott. Some years ago he used to enjoy one of those special desserts that “wasn’t on the menu” at a local restaurant. I believe they called it something like Fainting Maidens (or not) and it featured apricots soaked in vodka. Before I go tossing dried fruit willy-nilly into jars of booze I have a few questions which I’m hoping someone out there can answer.

1. Is it OK to use ordinary dried fruit which is full of sulphur dioxide when soaking it in booze?
2. Do you have to add sugar? I know you do when making a Rumtopf (with fresh fruit and booze), but does dried fruit need the added sugar? If so, how much?
3. Any tried and true (or completely mad) ideas for fruit/booze combinations?

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At the “old family bach” there is an “old Edmonds Cookbook” which belonged to my “old (late) mother” who cooked a lot because she had eight children.

This particular cookbook gets hauled out and gone over at least once a year when the conditions are right. The conditions are sister + sister + sister + rain = cabin fever. Cabin fever = stupidity with the Edmonds Cookbook. We read aloud the recipes and hints and spend a lot of time laughing our tits off and always finish up doubled over with tears rolling down our cheeks as we behave in a more infantile manner the further we progress through the book. If laughter is the best medicine then this Edmonds Cookbook has added years to our life.

I don’t know what edition the cookbook is because the cover has long gone so please just imagine the book is rather old. Surely it has been quite some time since a cookbook was published that had recipes with such evocative names. I can’t see Jamie Oliver devoting a segment of his show to Picnic Dainties or Lemon Fluff. But I can easily see Nigella dishing up platefuls of Eggs A La Goldenrod which she’d probably call Sex On A Light Sabre. Nuns’ Toast would not be in the domain of Gordon Ramsay, but one of our absolute favourites, Moonshine Biffs, probably would.

You’ve got to give a standing ovation to someone nifty enough to not only design a food item but have big enough balls to name it Moonshine Biff. If I ever owned a racehorse, that’s what I’d call it.

The mirth flows in many ways as we go through this book. Someone always finds the poultry and game section and gets to the page for swan. Then they say: “Here are the ingredients … swan” and for some reason we find this tremendously funny.

Then someone else grabs the book and calls out “Toad Stools. Guess what’s in them?” Thankfully, not toad’s stools.

The use of complete rather than powdered eggs in the recipes suggests this book is post-war era but there was clearly still a lack of certain ingredients in 1950s(?) New Zealand. Colonial Goose is actually mutton and forcemeat (we’ll have no stuffing here). Mock cream is forgivable and even quite tasty but after that things start getting a bit weird.

Supreme fibbing skills are called for to try to convince your family that grated potato in batter is, in fact, baby fish in the Mock Whitebait Patties. More imagination is needed when you decide to serve your guests Mock Chicken. You try this and tell me how you get along: cook a chopped onion in a little butter. Add a small (Edmonds’ emphasis) chopped tomato, mixed herbs and an egg and cook it slowly until the mixture thickens, then pile it on to a water biscuit and garnish with a bit of parsley. Offer it up as chicken and tell me there’s not a soul alive you managed to fool. And if there is, I’ve got a job for you.

But I’ve mocked Mr Edmonds (sure to rise, the original Viagra guy) enough for one day and this is really all about the fact that I decided to tackle one of these old recipes myself.

I gathered together the Mock Stepchildren and Mock Stepgrandchildren (because Mr Scott is, in fact, a Mock Husband and refuses to make an honest woman out of me) for Sunday-night dinner and instead of providing them with their usual safe but tasty fare, I goose-stepped right on out of the comfort zone and made vintage pudding … Chocolate Eve’s Pudding to be precise.

Things went fairly well for a while. I always admire a recipe that allows you to get the really messy bits over with before the guests arrive and get a chance to see that in the absence of real children I HAVE LET THE DOGS LICK THE SPOONS AND BOWLS.

I was mixing away and got to the bit where you fold in the sifted dry ingredients alternately with milk or water. There is no suggested quantity for the liquid. The recipe states “moist mixture”. For the first time in my life I have to question “moist”. Is 1950s moist the same as 2008 moist? Normally I’d phone Mother for advice but she’s tootling around heaven as a Mock Angel so I had a “damn, if only I’d listened to her more” moment before realising I was halfway through assembling this beast so I had to quantify moist in a bit of a hurry. I phoned around and got everything from damp to not too wet and was none the wiser.

I winged it and I think I winged it wong WRONG. The pudding was dense, but perhaps puddings were dense in those days. In future I’d probably go for a mixture not quite so moist. At the risk of being sued for all kinds of terrible infringements of copyright I’ve scanned the recipe below for you. Make it yourself and see how it goes. Don’t forget to send me a photo and I’ll add it to the collection.

As always, the proof of the pudding is in the eating:

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