The Dishiest Halloween Dish – Black and Blue Salsa

categories: Books, Podcasts, Side Dishes, Tasty Reads, TV

Wow! It’s been sooooo very long since I have done one of these posts. I think this is worth the wait though. Ever since I found the recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Light & Easy, the Black and Blue Salsa, as I have come to call it, has been on high rotation in my kitchen! And it’s a perfect meal for a Halloween dinner, given it’s dark and spooky colour!

You can see it top of the photo here as part of the salmon burrito bowl (except it was on a plate) that i had for dinner the other night. The main ingredients of the salsa are black beans and blueberries hence the black and blue name.

If this combination appears strange to you, don’t worry it did to me as well. But trust me, it works! It also looks quite lovely on a plate because the dark colours contrast nicely with against greens, chicken, fish etc. Hugh describes it as “dark and devillishly well flavoured, ,this is hot sharp, sweet and smoky all at the same time” He’s right, it is also totally delicious and highly addictive as well as being jam-packed with healthful ingredients!

I like this with some coriander added. The original recipe does not have it.

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Black and Blue Salsa

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A delicious and healthy salsa, perfect with chicken, fish or any grilled meat

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

For The Salsa
400g can of black beans, rinsed and drained
200g blueberries
1 small red onion, chopped
2 medium hot red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
Handful of coriander leaves, chopped

For The Dressing

1 garlic clove, smashed
juice of 1 lime
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt and Pepper

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

For The Dressing

Combine the garlic, lime juice, paprika, sugar, cider vinegar and oil in a jar. Shake well to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let sit for around half an hour to let the flavours develop.

For the Salsa

Combine the blackbeans, blue berries, onion an chilli in a bowl
Strain the dressing to remove the garlic and pour over.
Mix well.
If possible, let stand for half an hour before serving.
Just before serving sprinkle the chopped coriander over the top.
Enoy!

Notes

You can also add diced avocado into this. I left it out this time because I already had avocado on my plate.

Elsewhere in life….

Watching

I am mid way through S2 of Narcos and thoroughly enjoying it. Ditto Stranger Things

Narcos

Reading

My current read is Truly, Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty. I loved one of her previous books, Big Little Lies but I am struggling with this one.

Tasty Reads

The October Choice was Preserving. I chose The Modern Preserver by Kylee Newton. I loved this book and it is likely to be my Tasty Reads book of the year. I have made so many things from it and every one of them has been great!

The only book likely to beat it from top position at the end of the year is the November / December choice – Free Choice. On the back of some very high review praise, I have chosen Stirring Slowly by Georgina Hayden.

Described as a “new modern classic” by none other than Jamie Oliver, I am looking forward to picking this up and getting stuck in!

Podcasts

Seeing as my favorites Tanis and The Black Tapes are both on between season hiatus, I have started listening to My Favorite Murder. It’s a comedy true crime podcast and I love it. I think the two hosts are brilliant and I am so glad I still have 30+ episodes to go before I am caught up!

http://www.feralaudio.com/show/my-favorite-murder/

Other

OMG. I have started running. Well, I have started staggering around the back streets and local track in a facsimile of running. But it’s a start. I am doing the Couch to 5k program and am midway through week 4.

My aim is to be able to do a full 5k by Christmas. We’ll see. It really starts to ramp up after this week, I am a little nervous. And the thing is, I totally hate doing it when I am doing it. My chest aches, my legs ache, I am slow and ungainly and huff and puff like a pack a day smoker. But everytime I do it, I get a little bit better. And that feels marvellous!

This week I am looking forward to cooking the Cherry Flapjack Granola from Stirring Slowly and a Tom Yum soup from another Tasty Reads favourite, Adam Liaw’s Big Pot.

What are you reading / watching / listening to?

What are you looking forward to cooking?

Have a Happy Hallloween, a fab week and to borrow a catch phrase from my new favorite podcast, “Stay sexy; don’t get murdered”

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02
Aug
2016

Bali and My Holiday Reading Habits – Repost from 2016

categories: Bali, Books, Travel

Salamat Datang! I’m back from two week in Bali and, whilst I have yet to cook anything, I am serious blogging withdrawal so I thought I would give you a brief catch up on the trip. There were many hours of pool and beachside lazing so I did a LOT of reading. So, I thought I would do a combined what we did / what I read post and also let you know the…ahem…science behind how I choose my holiday reads!

Stop #1 – Ubud

Our first stop was Ubud in central Bali. Unlike the rest of Indonesia which is Muslim, the Balinese are largely Buddhists. They are deeply spiritual and part of their spirituality involves putting out offerings for the Gods each day. Offerings on the ground ward off evil spirits, offerings above the ground attract the good spirits. Sometimes you will also see an offering with a cookie or a cigarette or a glass of arak in it. These are the ancestor offerings and contain the respective ancestor’s favourite things!

They also adorn their statues of the Gods with fresh flowers each day!

I did a Balinese cooking class at Ketut’s Place which was awesome! The class was in an open kitchen overlooking rice paddies and a garden where most of the vegetables we used were grown. Ketut was also a fabulous host, knowledgeable and incredibly funny! I can’t wait to get back into cooking so I can show you some of what I learned! Incidentally, there are only four names in Bali. The first child is always called Wayan, the second is Made, the third child is Nyoman and the fourth child is Ketut. If a family has more than four children, it starts all over again with child #5 being called Wayan.

We did a trip to the Ubud Monkey Forest. Now these guys take the term cheeky monkey to a whole new level – if it isn’t bolted down, they will steal it – hats, sunglasses, cameras are all fair game! We sat down for a little rest at one point and the Fussiest Eater in the World had a monkey rifling through his pockets! Another baby monkey held out what was his prize possession for us to look at – it was a diamond earring. So brazen!

Ubud was lovely, a lovely place to chill out. The cooking class was amazing and I would recommend that to anyone. Food highlight was eating at The 3 Monkeys on the Monkey Forest Road. The downside/s were that it was a little rainy and the villa we stayed in happened to be next to a chicken farm. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived next to a chicken farm but the roosters start crowing at around 3am and do not STFU. Afternoon naps became a thing!

Holiday Reading Habit #1 – The Re-Read/s

I have an annual book cull where I get rid of all the books I have read that I didn’t enjoy (so many this year, it has been a really BAD year for reading for me). Then I do a sweep of my main bookshelves and pull out anything that I look at and think “Now…what was that about again?” and these go onto a holding shelf where they become the basis for the holiday re-read. The holiday re-read is ruthless. It is a case of love it or leave it. Literally. Leave it in the hotel or ideally, swap it for something better in the hotel book exchange!

I had two re-reads in this years picks and OMFG…if anything could convince you of how varied my reading tastes are, have a look at these. Lets start with:

allmenarebastards.com by Allison Rushby

I read this cover to cover on the plane. And had time to spare. Which should tell you everything you need to know. It’s a light, frothy piece of chick lit about a girl who sets up a website called allmenarebastards.com which, quelle surprise, goes viral and how she finds true love despite her man hatin’ ways. It made the 6 hour plane trip to Bali go by relatively quickly but the main character really annoyed me. I also found myself wondering why this had made the re-read shelf and was not dispatched to a better place, i.e. the local charity shop in the first instance.

Verdict: Left it on a jet plane.

The Raw-Shark Texts by Stephen Hall

I bought this when it first came out in 2007 and remember being not entirely taken with it. Obviously not enough to discard it but I remember thinking it was a bit too clever-clever, a little too fond of it’s own high concepts and wordplays (for an example…name the Raw-Shark Texts is a play on words on the Rorschach Tests administered by psychiatrists). I chose it because about a week before I left I was listening to some old booky podcasts and heard it being reviewed favourably on on Hear…Read This. This was enough to get me to pull it off the shelf for another go.

I don’t even know where to begin with this. A man wakes up one morning with no recollection of who he is. Turns out he is Eric Sanderson v 2. Through letters from the original Eric Sanderson he learns that he lost the love of his life, Clio in a diving accident in Greece. Eric and his cat called Ian embark on a quest to find Dr Trey Fidourus who may hold the clue to Eric’s past. Eric’s nemesis in this quest is a Ludovician, a gigantic thought shark who, before it kills you, destroys your memories.

It is a really clever book and I enjoyed reading this a lot more this time and felt that I either understood, or was not as irritated by, the wordplays and stylistic concepts as I was the first time round. I also enjoyed the story which is all about the power of words and memory and loss a lot more than I did the first time round. However, I felt that reading this twice was enough and it did not make the journey home with me.

It was also quite unnerving lying on a beach and reading about a (thought) shark. All the more so when I slipped on a rock on Lembongan island and cut my knee open. The only place to wash it was in the sea and the entire time I kept thinking of how sharks can smell a drop of blood in about a billion parts of water and expected to be attacked any second!

Verdict: Left (somewhat reluctantly) in Sanur. Standout character – Ian the cat.

Stop #2 – Legian

Ummm…if my photos are anything to go by I didn’t carpe diem at all in Legian. It would seem the opposite – all my photos are of night times, bars, cocktails, restaurants…and the Fussiest Eater in the World getting up close and personal at a drag show! It was much busier than Ubud with better weather and thankfully no roosters! In amongst all the tourist tat there here is some good shopping to be had in in Legian and it’s neighbour Seminyak. I bought two lovely leather handbags for a fraction of the cost back home. If you do want the tourist stuff, be prepared to barter hard.

Holiday Reading Habit #2 – Personal Development

I like to use our winter holiday as a time of reflection and planning for the “year” ahead. My birthday is mid August so I tend to set my annual goals each year to start from September. Our winter break is a great time for reflection on the year gone by and what to aim for in the coming 12 months. To that end, I like to get a bit of my personal development reading in during this time. This is also my time to plan for the blog and I had a super ( at least I think so) idea for a new segment. Stay tuned for that.

This year I read:

Radical Self Love by Gala Darling

I think I would have loved this book had I read it in my 20’s when I totally lacked confidence in myself. Having someone say that it is ok to be yourself, however offbeat or oddball that self if would have been very empowering. Now, that I am an old curmudgeon, I didn’t find anything in here that I hadn’t heard before. Having said that, I think there are times we could all use a little boost and I think this will be a book I turn back to in those times to get some motivation or see myself out of a low patch. And having said THAT, I found her talk of tapping as a way to relieve everything from eating disorders to childhood traumas to be way too out there for me. Does anyone do this? I had not even heard of it before reading this and it sounds highly spurious. Please correct me if I am wrong!

Verdict: A real pick and mix. Some parts I will definitely refer back to, some parts (the tapping) were not for me.

Let it Out by Katie Dalebout

I used to be a frequent listener to Katie’s podcast, The Wellness Wonderland but I gave it up because it got a bit too woo-woo for me. There is a bit of that in Let it Out but I feel that the great journalling tips contained in here far outweigh the flakiness quotient. I have not finished this yet but, as a sporadic journaller who wants to be a regular journaller, this contains some great ideas!

Verdict: Definite keeper!

Stop #3 – Sanur

On the way to the beach resort of Sanur we drove to Tanah Lot, one of Bali’s most beautiful temples:

And we did a day trip to Lembongan Island…tropical paradise!

(Except for when you fall over over and cut your knee on a rock so are a bit too scared to swim in case a shark gets you!)

Holiday Reading Habit #3 – The One You’ve Been Wanting To Read for Ages

I took The Goldfinch with me. Did not even open it. Very disappointed with myself as that is a big and heavy book to be carrying around for no reason!

Holiday Reading Habit #4 – The Book Set in the Place You are At

Epic fail. Did not even think of a book set in Bali to read. BUT had an awesome idea for a book set in Bali to write. Then again I was rather cocktail fuelled at the time. Lets see. If it’s still burbling away in there by NANOWRIMO, maybe I’ll have a crack at writing it!

Holiday Reading Habit #5 – The Total Surprise

This is usually something I pick up on my travels but this time was something I had with me.

I finished Gala Darling by the pool and could not be bothered to walk back to the hotel room to get The Goldfinch. And here’s my Gala Darlingesque tip for the young and impressionable. ALWAYS walk back to the hotel room to get the book you really want to read. Because otherwise you will flick on your Kindle to something like The Good Girl which you have already started and didn’t particularly enjoy but hey, its there and there’s no point in starting anything new when you have The Goldfinch waiting in your hotel room.

Maybe I have read too many of the Gone Girlesque books that have come onto the market since the original but this story of a kidnapping did not grab me at all.

Verdict: Should have walked back to the hotel room to pick up The Goldfinch

However, I read it here so life was not all bad!

Back soon with some cooking!

And tell me how do you choose your holiday reads?

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15
Apr
2016

History Happy Hour – April 15, 1912 – Punch Romaine

categories: Books, Cocktail, Rum, Sparkling, White Wine

“Everyone knows what rockets at sea mean,” said the portly Boston Harbor pilot.

“They mean distress…It means, please come to me because I am in trouble. Simple as that.”

“But you see, that’s just my problem. If it is that simple, I’m trying to understand why the ship that The Titanic saw did not come….Is there any reason why the captain would not go to the aid of the distressed ship?”

“No, if he saw them, he must go. It’s the oldest tradition of the sea.”

The Californian was the closest ship to The Titanic on the night it sank, possibly only 8 miles away. It was close enough for crew members to see the lights on the sinking ship and the eight distress rockets sent up by The Titanic. They alerted the Captain. And, yet, they did not go to help.

This is the story of The Midnight Watch.

The Midnight Watch is a super read. I loved it and I’m sure it is going to rank high in my books of the year. Even though, it is also soooooo frustrating. Right from the start you know that The Californian did not go to help The Titanic. And of course, you want to know why. And at times you want to reach into the book and shake one of the people and yell “Why? Why didn’t you do something?” WHY?” Or, as one of the reporters in the book says to Captain Lord of The Californian

“If you’re the only one who can speak, then you must speak more!”

First Class Food on the Titanic — Chocolate Eclairs were served to the First Class Passengers on The Titanic.

The writing is beautiful. From tales of heroism and gallantry to cowardice and inaction, The Midnight Watch covers the best and worst of human behaviour both in the face of, and following momentous events:

“Because by now we knew the numbers. Fifty-eight first-class men has found their way into the lifeboats but fifty-three third-class children had not. It was an almost perfect correlation. For almost every rich man who lived a poor child had died”

American IceCream — American Ice Cream was on the menu for Second Class Passengers on The Titanic. Passengers in First Class were served French Ice Cream

“What Franklin (Head of The White Star Line) thought of the Captain I couldn’t know, but I did know that if he, Franklin, had been accused of abandoning so many people, the weight of shame would have broken him. And yet, Lord’s head was upright, he seemed to bear no weight at all”

So, so good. The Midnight Watch not only brought the story of The Californian but the entire period to life. This is the kind of historical fiction that I love; writing that truly transports you to another time and place. Oh and, if you wiki Captain Lord, he looks EXACTLY how I imagined he would!

When I read I see the words as a movie in my head and I think that this would make a fabulous film. The journalist searching for justice, the proud, flinty Captain; the second officer torn between loyalty and a desire to tell the truth. It would be amazing.

Titanic Third Class Food — Third Class passengers on The Titanic were fed hearty, no frills fare. Fresh bread and butter, cold meat, cheese and pickles were part of their menu.

I was initially disappointed with the “answer” posited by David Dunn as to why Lord and The Californian did not go to the aid of The Titanic. Although perfectly plausible, It felt to me like an anti-climax; such a little reason for such an appalling consequence. But then I realised – pretty much any answer would have been disappointing. Because the only acceptable answer to the question of “Why didn’t you save the 1500 people who died that night?” would have been “Because we were too busy saving 1501 people elsewhere”.

Nonetheless a totally brilliant read.

Punch Romaine was served To First Class passengers on The Titanic as a palate cleanser between the first and second courses on the fateful night of April 14th. It is a white wine, rum and champagne cocktail served over…wait for it…. a mound of crushed ice. Which is surely worth it’s own line in Alanis Morisette’s Ironic. Don’tcha think?

On a total tangent, Romaine was one of the names my parents had picked out for me before I was born. Can you imagine a more foodie name than Romaine Fryer? Then again, Taryn was bad enough growing up, can you imagine going through life with the same name as a lettuce?

You know what else is a lettuce?

Iceberg.

Which brings us back to…..doh, oh, oh, oh….or Punch Romaine.

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