Matariki Lights

July 14, 2023July 13, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

On the eve of Matariki, I woke to an empty house, which meant I didn’t have to tiptoe around being quiet until my husband woke.

The morning being dark and cold, I decided to start the day with music, and because we’re so close to Matariki and the promise of longer days to come, I searched up music with the word light in the title.

So my day started with Phil Collins’ song, Dance Into the Light, Lorde singing Green Light, Light (My Time Has Come) by Madison Ryann Ward, Nu Aspect’s Light, and One More Light by Linkin Park.

What a great way to start the day, to start the new year, to celebrate all that has passed and all that is to come.

Whatever your plans for celebrating Matariki this weekend, I hope it is full of the light cast by people you love and things that make you happy.

And as I look forward to the coming growing season, the challenges and opportunities that the coming year has in store, I’m going to try to inject more music into my mornings.

So come on, dance into the light with me. Here’s a little poem I scribbled down on the solstice—it’s equally pertinent for Matariki.

On the darkest day
We turn to the light,
Hope for a ray to warm our cheek.

On the darkest day
We look to the stars,
Imagine constellations
To guide our stumbling steps.

On the darkest day
We light a fire,
Praying the kindling
Is still dry.

On the darkest day
We gather our whānau,
Tell stories of sunlight.

On the darkest day
We find comfort in the night,
In the slow circle of the seasons,
The dance of faraway suns
Across a black sky.

On the darkest day
We recall deeds of light,
Sun-dappled paths,
And warm sand.

On the darkest day,
Even on the darkest day
There is light.

Butter, Butter … and more butter

July 11, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I checked out a cookbook from the library last week called Butter, Butter, by Petra Galler. I was sold on it before I even opened the book—the subtitle is ‘Sometimes more is more.’ The photography is dark and sensual, with lots of dripping honey, and hands smeared with berries and icing. Who could resist?

Indeed, I’ll be looking for this book next time I’m in the bookstore—it’s one I’d like to have on hand permanently, not just for a few weeks.

I want to try everything in this book. Petra is a Jewish New Zealander, and her recipes combine traditional Jewish dishes with modern Kiwi flavours in a way I find intriguing.

Yesterday I tried her recipe for Mandelbrot, a twice-baked cookie similar to biscotti, but higher in fat, so it has a more delicate texture.

As you would expect from a book titled Butter, Butter, these cookies are rich—full of butter, eggs, nuts, and chocolate. Although they take some time to make, they’re not difficult, and the end result is beautiful and delicious.

I haven’t had a chance to make anything else from this book yet, but next on my to-bake list is Tahini Shortbread with Salted Chocolate Ganache, then Almond Butter Brownies, then Miso and Roasted White Chocolate Cookies, and then … Seriously, I need to go purchase a copy of this book. You do too. Here’s the Mandelbrot recipe, but don’t stop there. Buy the book. And a few blocks of butter …

390 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp flaky salt
1 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
245 g butter, melted and cooled
200 g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla paste
1/4 tsp almond extract
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange
3 eggs
180 g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
100 g walnuts, roasted and roughly chopped

For dusting:
30 g caster sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

In a medium bowl, combine all the dry ingredients, mixing well.

Place the butter, sugar, vanilla, almond extract and zests in a large bowl and whisk with a mixer until combined. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until thick and pale; about 2-3 minutes.

Working by hand, gently fold the dry ingredients into the wet until just combined. Add the chocolate and walnuts, and mix well. Cover the bowl and refrigerate 1-2 hours until firm.

Preheat the oven to 175℃ fan-bake. Grease a large baking sheet.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into two pieces. Form each piece into a log about 33 cm long and 5 cm wide. Place on the prepared tray and bake for 25 minutes.

Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 130℃ fan-bake. Then cut the logs diagonally into 2 cm thick slices. Sprinkle both cut sides with the cinnamon/sugar mix, and bake them, cut side up for 20 minutes. Flip the slices over, then bake another 20 minutes.

Allow to cool completely on the pan.

Winter’s Gift

July 6, 2023July 5, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Here in the dark part of the year, the lack of daylight can be depressing. Rise in the dark, eat breakfast in the dark, have a few hours of light, then eat dinner in the dark, go to bed in the dark … And even during the day, shadows are long, and the frost lingers in every chilly pocket of the yard. The trees across the road cast shade on my office windows for much of the day, so even the sunny side of the house can feel dark.

But the low angle of the sun in winter comes with its own beauty. While my office is mostly shaded, the trees don’t provide complete shade. Shafts of sunlight track across my office as the sun moves. An antique chandelier crystal my husband bought me years ago catches the sun’s rays and fills my office with thousands of rainbows that appear and disappear throughout the day, shimmering on the white walls and ceiling and splashing across the floor.

In summer, the sun is too high to hit the crystal—it’s shaded by the eaves. I could hang the crystal lower, so it made rainbows all year, but I like to think the rainbows are winter’s gift to me. They’re something to look forward to during these short days.

Tamariki Book Festival

June 30, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I have started and not finished about a dozen blog posts in the past three weeks. The reason? I’ve been organising the Tamariki Book Festival, which is on tomorrow in the TSB Space at Tūranga in Christchurch.

A fabulous lineup of local authors who write everything from picture books to young adult novels will be running activities and selling books. It’s a great way to kick off the school holidays!

I hope to see you there, and I promise I’ll get back to regular blogging once I’ve had a good long sleep.

Fruity Experiments

June 1, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

The freezer is packed with early summer fruits—raspberries, gooseberries, red currants, and black currants. Seriously, if we don’t make a good effort to eat it, we’ll still have fruit left when summer rolls around again.

Black currant scones before baking–colour unusual, but okay…

So I’ve been experimenting with new and interesting ways to incorporate fruit into baked goods.

Two weeks ago I made a cookie bar that is supposed to be filled with chocolate fudge. I filled it with black currant puree instead, making a wonderful tart-sweet flavour bomb.

There was thawed black currant puree left over from the bars, so for Sunday breakfast I took my favourite lemon barley scone recipe (which I’ll have to blog about someday …) and substituted black currant puree for the liquid ingredients. The results were … mixed.

The flavour was good, but of course I love black currant, so I expected that. The colour, on the other hand, was more of a conversation piece than a bonus—dingy purple. The scones didn’t rise as well as they usually do either, and the texture was heavier than I would have liked.

So I’d say the scone experiment was inconclusive and needs more testing.

Black currant scones after baking–colour a bit disturbing…

I also made raspberry crisp and lemon pound cake studded with red currants over the past two weeks, and these were resounding successes. They, too, require replication.

And there’s plenty more fruit for additional studies! I don’t think it will be too much of a hardship to work our way through the frozen fruit.

Do I have to eat it?

May 26, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Nance is a small yellow fruit popular in Panama. When my husband and I first arrived there, chicha de nance (a drink made from crushed nance fruit) was something we could barely choke down out of politeness to our hosts. The flesh of nance fruits is oily, gritty, acidic, and has a funky cheesy flavour. If you think too much about it, chicha de nance is reminiscent of watery vomit.

So you’ll understand why we didn’t like it.

But during nance season (and for several months afterwards, because people store it in bottles of water—yeah, don’t even think about what grows in those bottles) it’s impossible to avoid nance. Everyone you visit serves chicha de nance. Neighbours give you bottles filled with nance fruit.

You learn to drink it without grimacing. Before long you’re drinking it without even thinking about vomit. It’s a slippery slope from there, and next thing you know, you’re looking forward to nance season and wondering if you can trade some eggs for a bottle of nance from your neighbour.

I’m thinking about nance today as I contemplate the feijoas dripping from our tiny feijoa bushes. This is the plants’ first year producing fruit and I am amazed and a little terrified at their productivity.

I’m terrified because I hate feijoas. I don’t even like the smell. Simply walking past the fruit bowl when there are a few ripe feijoas in there makes me wrinkle my nose in disgust. I find it hard to breathe around them. Eating one makes me shudder—I swallow quickly to avoid tasting it too much.

Fortunately for me this year, my husband has been keeping up with the feijoas—he loves them. But those feijoa bushes are only going to get bigger. Next year I will have no excuses—I’ll have to eat them.

So I’m thinking about nance. If I could learn to love a fruit that tastes and feels like vomit, surely I can learn to love feijoas, right?

They say a child needs to try a food up to 15 times before they’ll eat it. That’s a lot of feijoas …

Lazy Lemon Cake

May 18, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Sometimes you want cake, but don’t want to work for it.

A head cold this past week has left me craving cake, but without the energy to do much baking. Consoling myself with cookbooks from the library, I came across a recipe for Greek Lemon-Yoghurt Loaf Cake that was so easy, I couldn’t resist. Nothing else really caught my eye in the Great British Bake Off cookbook this came from, but I think this one is a keeper.

Here’s the recipe, in case you’re feeling lazy …

150 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
50 g ground almonds
200 g caster sugar
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
3 medium eggs (I used 2 large)
125 ml Greek-style yoghurt
125 ml mild light olive oil (I used a mix of canola and extra-virgin olive oil, because I didn’t have light olive oil)

for the glaze:
125 g icing sugar, sifted
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1 – 1 1/2 tbsp Greek-style yoghurt

Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and almonds into a mixing bowl (tip in any almonds remaining in the sieve). Stir in the sugar and lemon zest.

Combine the eggs, yoghurt and oil in a measuring jug and beat well with a fork. Pour into the flour mixture and stir until well combined.

Pour into a greased loaf pan lined with a strip of baking paper. Bake at 180℃ for 55-65 minutes until golden brown. When the cake is ready, cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the edges of the pan and lift the cake out by the lining paper and allow to cool on a rack.

Make the glaze by sifting the icing sugar into a bowl. Mix in the lemon zest and then add just enough yoghurt to make a smooth, shiny glaze with the consistency of double cream. While the cake is still hot, spoon the glaze over the top.

I have lots of ideas for variations on this cake—using a blackcurrant glaze, replacing half the flour with barley flour, stirring in frozen blackcurrants … it’s a recipe that invites you to make it again and again.