Stomachs on legs are proud to present

From last weekend's edition of the Dominion Post here in Wellington, NZ:

In 1987, Saroun Lach was one of 50 or so Cambodian refugees on a plane from Thailand, headed for New Zealand.
Mr Lach became New Zealand's champion pie maker, several times over. The walls of his Wellington Elite Cafe and Bakery in Victoria St provide a gallery for 30 framed awards, stretching back to 2000, the year he became a pie maker.

As a boy, he had been a top scholar. In New Zealand, he became first a wool sorter and later a taxi driver. Mr Lach had a fondness for a daily pie, but was very critical of many he ate, comparing one with another, and thinking that the best were few and far between.

When a bakery shop came up for sale in Alicetown, at the urging of his mother-in-law he bought it. He won Bakel's Supreme Piemaker of New Zealand, a title he would win again, along with many others. His steak, mince and cheese pies became a rapid urban legend.

He loved music, movies and his family.

He was considered a role model of industry and good citizenship in the Buddhist community. Paying tribute to him, his brother-in-law said his love would be "the roof above our heads to shelter us from storms to come".

In other words, Mr Lach will be tending that big crimped and fluted pie top in the sky.

Our friends Ina & Harry are quite partial to pumpkin and sweet root veg, especially in the form of desserts or jams. Harry suggested we have a sweet potato pie-making party with prosecco yesterday.

It seems like just the other day that we christened the start of spring with rhubarb-quark cheesecake in Ina & Harry's garden, shortly after they moved into that house. But in the mean time a new resident has arrived: Johanna (see gratuitously cute baby pic below).

I can assure you, despite the teeming wildlife (birds pooping on the garden table and rustling in the bushes, toads getting frisky in the pond) we were smiling like Johanna on the inside after collectively baking that pie, cooling it on the window sill, and after many glasses of prosecco and strong cups of coffee, eating the pie in the fresh air.

If you like, you can de-veganize the recipe by adding an egg to the filling (make sure to reduce the amount of tofu a little -but do not eliminate completely, as the tofu adds good texture without too much richness). Yesterday I added an egg to the crust, which made it a little chewier and less crispy-dense than usual.



Sweet Potato Pie (adapted from a recipe in the Fresh At Home cookbook by Ruth Tal Brown)

Crust:
3 cups flour (I use a mix of wholegrain and light spelt flour)
1/4 cup raw sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup warm water
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup margarine

1. Grease & flour a pie plate or crockery dish for tarts/quiche
2. Combine dry ingredients.
3. Add marge and oil to dry ingredients and rub it in with your fingers
4. Add water and mix thoroughly. Add more oil or water if the dough won't hold together.
5. Press the dough straight into the dish (I find that this is faster and just as effective as rolling it out first)
6. Pierce all over with a fork
7. Bake for 15 min at 175 degrees then remove to cool. Leave the oven on to keep it warm while you add the filling.

Filling:
3 medium-large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
3/4 cup silken tofu
2 tbsp grated ginger with juices
1 tsp salt
1-1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
1 cup maple syrup or brown sugar (this time we used palm sugar)
1/3 cup of vegetable oil (sunflower, rapeseed, olive)

1. Simmer sweet potato pieces til tender
2. Blend or mash all ingredients thoroughly (you can reserve a few pieces of sweet potato to mash for the baby)
3. Spread the filling in the slightly cooled crust and bake at 175 degrees for 30 min or until top is slightly browned. Remove and cool on a windowsill before serving.

I'm still not sure if this Bialetti stove-top coffee can, seen at Habitat in Neumarkt, is supposed to be taken seriously - but in terms of volume it might represent my daily coffee consumption quite well.

When serious baristas talk about the ideal ratio of coffee grounds to liquid extracted, they're obviously talking about real pump-driven espresso - not these stove top abominations. So let's not bother to try and figure out just how overextracted the grounds in this Bialetti would become.

One of the first 'articles' I wrote for our school newspaper The Flannel was about the characteristics of proper espresso and the history of coffee-drinking in New Zealand's capital city.

It was a tumultuous saga of Swiss, Polish and Italian immigrants, of a hard-bitten lamington-serving cafeteria called the Matterhorn giving way to dutiful Italian espresso machines embraced by hordes of government employees and academics.

Sure, a teenager writing about espresso is 'just a tad' pretentious. But being a student at the inner city Wellington High School is all about skipping school, hanging around Cuba St when you're supposed to be in biology class, snacking on apples and Cookie Time cookies, then bumping into your mates and getting coffees, 'cause you're too old for shoplifting now.

Early on I was dragged to cafés with my mother, where we would look at expensive import magazines or read library books (one of Wellington's good spots used to be the Lido opposite the Civic Square and public library).

Later, when working at a café with a punk chef, a horny gallerist and a gay linguist, I learned to take due care with each cup. A flat white with corn fritters or dark Whittaker's Sante chocolate bars, a heaping spoonful of kiwi familiarity and a dollop or two of sarcasm, please.

I would honestly rather drink a strong stove top coffee or even a strong cup of plunger coffee than a weak espresso. Other forms of coffee can be appreciated on their own merits, I feel, though I am not really down with the cult of Bodum drip as practised in the USA and Japan.

As defined by Lord Jeffrey Steingarten, the predominant flavours should be "caramel, flowers (including jasmine), fruit, chocolate, honey, and toast - but only if you do everything right." (i.e. two tablespoons of 192 degrees fahrenheit water forced through seven grams of finely ground coffee under nine atmospheres of pressure for 25 seconds).

Otherwise, as Jeffrey notes: "One false step and you are totally doomed. One false step and you will never taste the jasmine."

While we were in Spain, we didn't manage to snaffle one of the golden tickets to Ferran Adria's El Bulli restaurant.

We did, however, find ourselves driving a couple of hours to where El Bulli is situated on Spain's Costa Brava. On a little boat, we floated quite far out from the shoreline. The boat's driver tantalizingly pointed out a white dot on the shoreline: the house behind which El Bulli is situated. Some people snacked on fish-paste vol-au-vent canapés, anti-seasickness tablets and yummy olives.


(photo by Lander Larrañaga)


(photo from my i-Phone)

Then we ended up in this tiny bay, where strange sculptures and ancient picnic furniture lurked among olive trees and bushes of blue flowers.


(photo by Lander Larrañaga)

In this secluded spot, we ate very traditional food - including paella, which was announced with much fanfare by the proud chef.


(photo by Lander Larrañaga)

It looks pretty, but I'm not such a paella fan. I'm just not so into that type of rice. The best things for me were the fideuà (short noodles with lots of seafood), and as always, the silvery, oily anchovies draped on the fresh tomato-smeared 'pa amb tomaquet' bread. At this meal, Benji B gave a nice speech about his method for making the perfect cheese toasty. After this trip, he says, he's going to switch it up and be all about the late night pa amb tomaquet.

Other highlights: the tiny clams, and the fried sardines (boquerones) which I prefer to the vinegar-marinated ones. Tony Nwachuku of Attica Blues was also enjoying these.

That zip-locked lentil salad from Metzgerei Schmitz went a ways, even when we gave half to Carmen & Demi: I guess I never need to eat it again.

I still didn't find out what that nice orange cheese was called (Edit: I found out today. It's 12-month old Mimolette, a cheese from North France, coloured with flower seeds and flavourized by an insect called the 'cheese mite'). It's fun to eat things in extreme colours.

By the way, we still didn't figure out what to do with all those extra champagne glasses from Ikea. I am currently gazing through a forest of them on our kitchen bench.

We thought of giving half to Carmen & Demi, but Demi doesn't drink.

Next time I am asked for money by one of Cologne's executive bums (pseudo-anarchist alcoholics who sit on the footpath beside ATMs and curse people, when not playing petanque in the park), maybe I should give him a box of champagne glasses. They would either sip 90% proof out of them, or smash them over their dogs' heads. Either way, it could suit their brand of punk-ethos to a tee.

Here's the mixed game pie I keep harping on about, from the Broadway Market
in London.

That pie was so bloody damn good. It was the apple of my pie, ah, eye.

It was sold by a nice old fellow with a trestle table, from an award-winning pie-maker who had prepared it herself the night before. (I didn't write down the name unfortunately).

This market has a very nice selection of foods (mostly organic or wild) including yummy Ghanaian stews like okra & pork and a peanut chicken stew (very good and a long queue), some nice 2nd hand clothes and a Japanese lady selling cute knock-offs, some overpriced antiques, old children's textbooks and good-looking bretagne-style crepes, brown and oozing with spinach and cheese.
It's very nice to walk there along the canal from Islington.



This trip to London (stopping off on the way back from Toronto) really changed my opinion about the food offerings of Old Blighty!

Other treats over four days included tasty soda bread from Selfridges supermarket, huge decadent Morrocan meringues covered in pistachios piled up in the window of a restaurant near Angel in Islington, very good lamb tagine, dips and flatbreads from one of three restaurants in Islington all called Gallipoli, and, on the more traditional tip, a YUM sticky date pudding – warm, steamed, light-textured but rich flavoured.

Another highlight was the famous London "foodie" (hate that word) destination the Borough Market
, which is in a very urban setting (under the struts of London Bridge?): we had warm organic apple juice with honey which tasted like apple pie, and bought an artisan brown loaf (I say brown because I'm not sure exactly what was in it,) from the Degustibus stall. Is artisan the most overused and confusing word of the moment? We saw an 'artisan toaster' at Saturn mega electronic store the other day. I'm waiting for the slow food movement toaster....it takes five days to slowly dry your bread into a cracker.

Of course there are still plenty of windows advertising jellied eels or baked beans and chips, too...

Top nosh, geezer.

Nothing like a good pie!!