And my cleverness doesn’t end there! I’ve been whisking up cleverness into a foamy clever froth and then baking it quickly into a divine cleverness meringue! Sure have.

Allow me to escort you through this journey of wonderment and cleverness. I’ve mentioned it a few times on this hereabout blogaboo and never with any degree of detail. It’s Sunday night! Have a shakshouka night! Step zero: find out what shakshouka is! An lush spicy soup of tomatoes, capsicums and spices, and then at the last moment you poach eggs in it; then serve it with feta and bread and za’atar…oh, just google it. Yeah. See what I mean? Now try saying it: give it a kind of Skyrim shout, too. SHAKshookAHHHHHH! That’s what’s on the cards Chez Spoonfully tonight. And by “cards”, I mean “plates”.

Roast yourself two red capsicums: mine took about an hour at 180°C, then let them cool.

You gots to start right.

Get out some of this sexy juice:

Nectar of the Gods if the Gods are olives.

And very finely chop some onions and carrots. You probably don’t know what that looks like, so here you go:

Pause for photos, obviously.

And then take your behemoth pot (for boiling behemoths):

Welcome back Big Red!

And then combine those last three photos. Pot on stove, oil in pot, onion/carrots in oil. Sizzle, sizzle, etc. Add your roasted capsicums and two tins of tomatoes:

Choice chopped caps!

Add about a canful of water and let it get a-boiling.

Meanwhile, get yourself some herbs and spices together. My stock base for shakshouka varies wildly depending on what I’ve got, what needs using up and what needs pruning. Today, there was coriander that needed using up, and parsley and mint needed pruning. A little coriander and mint for an accompanying cooling yoghurt sauce, and plenty of coriander and parsley for the broth. Also thyme. Spices: vary according to taste and availability. Since we’re having peeps over for shakshouka sharing, I toned back the spices. So tonight’s stock base:

• parsely
• thyme
• salt
• paprika
• cumin seeds
• ground coriander seeds
• one fresh mild chilli

Chop it all up, add another canful or so of water and bring it to the boil. Once you’ve got a rolling boil happening, turn it back and let it go to a simmer for a while, then taste it and make sure the salt level’s right.

If it’s not, you might have a sudden burst of YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE PERFECT?

Stroke of salty genius, baby.

A huge spoonful of finely chopped preserved lemon, baby. Wish I’d added more.

I was going to make some tortillas and do fresh za’atar flatbreads, but we’ve got some cornbread leftover that is a textural soulmate to the thick shakshouka. Beautiful.

I puréed my mighty shakshouka, then brought it back to a boil just before serving. When you’ve got it boiling beautifully, it’s time for an extra helping of RAD. Press the back of your ladle (or a massive spork or whatever) and make a little pit in the soup and crack an egg into it. Poach your egg in the simmering soup for a wee while: four minutes for me, to get an egg that’s cooked through but still has a soft yolk.

Then ladle into bowls and coax your poached eggs into the broth. Delicious, but…food photographer I am not.

Not photogenic.

Something that people constantly mention in relation to shakshouka is what a great hangover breakfast it is. Jesus. I cannot support such deviance. I mean, when I’m hungover, it’s all I can do to weep and beg for slices of cucumber or frozen mandarin segments. The last thing I can imagine doing with any joy is ingesting a spicy and flavour-intense blend of rich ripe veggies, with cornbread, mint yoghurt and za’atar.

An unnecessary aside, however: shakshouka is delicious and filling; cornbread and yoghurt is smooth and delicious; and if you need a triumphant dinner for a bunch of peeps, it’s the way to go.

Ever had pizza? ‘Course you have. I’m not going to fuck with you on that one.

Now add the two together. I’m going to leave your choice of base up to you, but I will say that if you can persuade M to make a fresh pizza base, you certainly should: dude’s got skillz. Make a shakshouka pizza sauce (roast capsicum if you’ve got it, purple onion, garlic, tomatoes, spices/sugar/salt: simmer the crap out of that emmereffer until it’s thick and saucy, blend if you want it smooth), topped with jalapenos, cheddar, feta, chilli flakes, za’atar; then you make little wells in the sauce and crack raw eggs into them and sprinkle a bit more za’atar on because why the fuck wouldn’t you?

I’ll be the first to admit the Internet does not need any more pizza photos. So consider these a luxury:

Before.

You need to be pretty careful shifting it into the oven so that you don’t spill raw eggs everywhere, but it’s not that hard.

After!

It’s ready when the eggs are cooked to your liking and the cheese is browned; if you really want to ascend to true awesomeness, may I suggest sprinkling with finely chopped preserved lemon and a drizzle of your hot sauce of choice?

Today’s spectacular triumph: cornbread. Cornbread is so easy I feel a bit embarrassed about listing it anywhere even tangentially connected to the word “challenge”. It’s easier than muffins. It’s easier than garter stitch. It’s easier than growing mint.

Perfection: what a bore.

Mix your wet, mix your dry, bake. DONE. That’s it over-simplified. I pinched this recipe from The Curvy Carrot, via foodgawker. Mods: hmm, didn’t measure my cheese, so I think I ended up with less. Next time, more cheese. Also, I didn’t have any buttermilk, so I Just used the ol’ regular-milk-curdled-with-lemon juice trick. I think that barely counts as a mod, since everyone knows about that, right? I also threw in half a cup or so of frozen corn kernels. That was a seriously good move.

My GOD this is some tasty business. It’s got a texture like a coarse, crumblesome, savoury cake, and I’m really excited about all the other flavourings I’m going to add next time I make it. Cheddar, jalapenos and cherry tomato halves! Roast capsicum and crumbled feta! Chives and roast garlic! It stands alone, but the texture begs you to serve it with something thick and hot like baked beans, ratatouille, or whatever — which would be why it’s traditionally served with chilli, of course.

Care for a wedge of AWESOME?

I can see why people would be tempted to add sweet things to it: there’s lots of recipes for sweet cornbreads with lemon and blueberries and such out there. But honestly, if you’re not matching it with cheese and something lush and savoury, you’re missing out.

Don't be fooled: that is a razor-sharp nose.

And then last night one of the neighbours had some friends over for dinner: their departure, after this dog’s bedtime, outraged her so that she barked every thirty minutes or so all night. Not a long spree of barking, just an offended “brouf, brff, brff”, so that M and I were regularly updated on her annoyance level.

So: slightly sleep-deprived and in the company of an indignant hound, today I’ve been doing small things. Sometimes food bloggers go all out and make seven-layer meringue tarts with whipped beet filling, presented as a dinky little image of a recipe card and pictures that would make you weep with the futility of your own pathetic attempts. Not me. I made a salad.

Aforementioned salad.

I bought some pretty chillies and then tooled around with the macro setting:

The hotter the chilli, the closer to God.

I put all my weekend things on the couch and took a photo of them:

My life is so awesome.

And then I chilled. I hate being tired: it makes me cranky and sad. Yesterday (while very tired) I tried to figure out why, but didn’t really get anywhere. I did nudge up against the frightening thought that maybe the world is a crueller, colder place than I think, and I exert a lot of energy to keep up the facade so when I’m tired it crumbles CRUMBLES and I see the horror of the world for all it truly is. Totally bogus: my life rocks. But cut my sleep into a smattering of 20-minute chunks and suddenly it’s tears in the supermarket because I don’t know what flaxseeds are, not really. In light of this shift towards the “incredibly poor” end of the judgment spectrum, I’m slowly learning that tired days are days for cutting myself some slack: instead of trying to function normally, or even normal-ish, I give up and sit down. No shame there. You want shame? I got yer shame RIGHT HERE (by which I mean elsewhere).

There’s ratatouille in the oven, slowly baking in anticipation of hungry workers needing nourishment all week. (Me and M, that is, we’re the workers around here, not that bourgeois brown hound you see above.) Not pictured; mug of tea and five crackers with peanut butter and apple slices. There’s knitting and a Helen Garner book and a sooky brown dog. Look upon my couch, ye mighty, and despair.

This weekend I made a lovely banana cake. I roasted some coffee, I dabbled with a bit of yoghurt-making. Nothing incredible. And then I ramped it up. You’ve already met the lasagna I triumphantly brought into the world. Meet its companion, born of the same electric womb.

Flognarde aux nectarines.

I am happy.

Take eight of the delicious, wonderful nectarines from the four-kilo bag of same your Mumini procured for you from a colleague, pit and roughly chop, then tumble into a baking dish, drizzle with sherry, sprinkle with sugar and let sit awhile. Whisk 3 eggs, 100mL of soy milk, a generous dash of vanilla, a tsp of baking powder, 60g plain flour and 60g sugar until smooth and well mixed. Pour over your fruit, top with toasted chopped almonds, and bake for 45-60 minutes.

I AM MORE HAPPY.

Nectarines are essentially a fuzz-less peach, and the scent of them cooking is unbelievable. Combined with the rest of the sweet nuttiness of the flognarde, the smell would drive you RIGHT OUT OF YOUR MIND with foodlust. Unless you’re as fantastic as me: then you just throw your head back and laugh, and the flognarde becomes yours to command. It’s great warm, but it’s at its best cold. And I have the strength of will it takes to wait.

My kitchen is currently the world’s centre of AWESOME.

I elected to make a lasaagna. There’s a fair bit involved, so you read to the end before you commit. I won’t have you chucking a tanty and calling me nasty names because it takes so long. Fuck that.

I should probably explain that the last time I made pasta was in anticipation of some friends coming over for tea. I’d knocked off early from work and come home to make the world’s biggest pot of minestrone and two loaves of crusty bread, and I was making the pasta towards the end of this process. I have since learned that spending an afternoon being tired and hungry (because you’re saving your appetite for the big dinner later on) does not produce optimal learning conditions. It just makes you shitty and tearful, so when the pasta doesn’t seem to be working somehow, the logical response is to shriek, fling it in the sink and use the dried pasta in the pantry that you suspect came with the house. So I was slightly hesitant about approaching this task, lest I once again have to face the unpleasant shrieking, flinging stage. Turns out that’s entirely optional.

Proto-pasta

Pasta

• 1 cup flour
• dash of salt
• 1 egg
• bit of water

Flour + salt + egg, mixed thoroughly, and then trickle the water in little by little until you get a thick, firm dough. It’s a pretty dry and heavy sucker, but it’s not like you’re going to bed with it. Knead it until it’s uniform and even, then worry that you haven’t made nearly enough and reassure yourself that you can always do with more practice and if there isn’t enough, you’ll make more.

Ball o'dough!

Run it through your pasta roller dealie or roll it out on the bench with a rolling pin until it’s translucently thin. Realise you have loads of pasta and won’t make any more today. Hang the sheets out to dry a little while you do the rest:

Delicate sheets

The big pot of ratatouille which is doubling as filling and which I forgot to tell you to put on first should be ready:

You've already done this, right?

Ratatouille you made earlier

• 1 eggplant
• 4 small zucchini
• 2 purple onions
• 2 red capsicums
• 2 green capsicums
• paprika
• cumin seeds
• salt
• 2 tins of tomatoes
• random chilli jam I found in the fridge
• thyme, parsely, oregano, basil

Roughly chop all your vegetables, finely chop all your herbs, add spices and chilli jam to taste, mix through the tomatoes and about half a tomato can of water. Mix well, then bake in the oven at 200° for about two hours. DONE. Ratatouille. Now might be a good time for me to mention that this pot of ratatouille will serve for one and a half loaf-tin-sized lasagna, while the pasta listed above will make enough pasta for two. So you can chuck in an extra tin of tomatoes somewhere along the line, or you can make one loaf-tin-sized lasagna and use the rest of the pasta and ratatouille to make some sort of awesome fettuccine or something. I don’t really care. But don’t waste it, please.

Now, since we’re doing lasagna, we want cheeeeeese sauce. I use soy milk for mine, since moo milk makes me sick. But the basic formula is still the same:

I like this bit.

3 tabs of butter, bubbling away;

Roux roux roux your boat

Add 3 tabs of plain flour and make a roux. Stir it for a bit over heat, giving it a chance to become smooth and cook slightly. Then start trickling in milk, stirring more or less constantly, until you have a thick, warm sauce. A good rule of thumb is 1 tab butter + 1 tab flour + 1 cup milk; I used less because I wanted a super thick sauce. I also would normally add a little salt, but I had plans along the lines of a shitton of parmesan, which brings its own salt to the party. Oh, parmesan. You so crazy.

Bring it together, bitches

Gotcher pasta, gotcher red juicy ratatouille, gotcher cheese sauce. It’s hammer time. Get them all together: this is your mise en place (meez ZON playzzzz).

Check out this motherfucking mise, yo.

Start laying that shit.

A little peak at what lies beneath.

My preference: red sauce, (pasta, red sauce, cheese sauce), pasta, red sauce, plain cheese. Repeat the details between the brackets as many times as you see fit. But always put sauce on the bottom of the pan, so the bottom isn’t a dry, disappointed husk of overcooked pasta. And always put plain cheese on the top. You know why.

Once I’d filled two loaf tins with layered awesomeness, I still had some sheets of pasta left over.

Hm.

Since this was my first — and, I may say, triumphant — batch of pasta dough, I was reluctant to chuck it out like yesterday’s crayfish. Instead I grabbed a pot of ratatouille that was lurking in the freezer from the last batch, threw in some chopped tomato and basil…

Waste not, BE AWESOME

Used the last of the pasta, the last of the parmesan, and the last of the ratatouille. And got two more lasagna, albeit single-serve lasanga bambini. Checkit:

Bambini deliziosa!

And the big suckah:

Dat pasta.

Butter my butt and call me a biscuit, but that’s some arse-kicking lasagna right there, m’friend. The second one is waiting, uncooked, and will be whisked away to a friend’s tonight to be cooked and shared on-site. Happy times ahead.

spoonfully tips on lasagna

• Put red sauce on the bottom of the pan, before any pasta.
• If you’re using dried pasta sheets, soak them in boiling water for a while before you start layering.
• Cheese on top. CHEESE ON TOP. Whatever goes between your layers is your own private concern, but for the love of pi, people, cheese on top.
• Freezes like a boss: lunches for weeks.

I’m asserting this is a win. I’m asserting I know how to make pasta. Cooking challenge item TICK. Next!

What she gave me:

• Knitting. Man, that first scarf: she showed me how to cast on, and then I would work a row of K1, P1 rib. She spotted mistakes, unpicked for me, and encouraged me to try again. Soon I was doing whole rows without mistakes; then blocks; finally the whole scarf was mine. I made every stitch. (Some of them more than once.) If I couldn’t knit now…jebus, I’d be on methadone or probation or something.
• Humour. Holy crap can she laugh. If there’s one thing we share — and there isn’t, there’s loads — it’s the ability to laugh in the face of craptitude. (She’s better at it than me: I take a bit to remember how, but she’s a pro.)
• Plants. Got a few hours? I’ll talk veggies until the carrots come home. Got a few more? She’ll talk flowers.
• Books. Ohh boy, there’s another few hours gone. Will talk words until interrupted by another round of tea.
• Tea. Black no sugar, for two, thanks.
• Love of animals. Fluffybums galore at Mumini’s house.
• Ability to disperse at least half of one’s meal over one’s self during the first ten minutes of eating.
• Petite stature.
• A liberal approach to instructions: I don’t think I’ve followed a recipe, knitting pattern or set of instructions ever, because I was reared on the attitude of “when they say [x], you’ll find it easier to do [y], and the results are better.”

What I kinda missed:

• Persistence: She will spend hours painstakingly hand-embroidering the bride and groom’s initials on the hem of the wedding dress she just spent six weeks making, because she know when things should be perfect. (True story.)
• Guts: Two bulky men are outside the childcare centre she runs, taking photos of the street. Mumini walks over: “Excuse me, would you mind explaining to me why you are photographing my childcare centre?” Man 1: “Quite right, madam.” and shows his police badge. I’d be timidly trying to shoo them with a newspaper: my Mumini gets down to business.
• Sewing: that embroidery on the six-week wedding dress I just mentioned? Tip of the iceberg. She sewed the whole wedding party. (I mean, just the clothes: they weren’t dolly bridesmaids or anything.) Toys, clothes, furnishings: she even reupholstered a set of couches once (but only once). If you can make it with a needle and fabric, she’s already made it and found a better way.

What I figured out myself:
How awesome she is. Funny, clever, resilient. Inclined to snore on the couch, also inclined to meet people with happy openness, animals with adoration, children with outright delight, and gadgets with eye-popping enthusiasm. She’s the cat’s pyjamas.

Happy birthday Mumini! Without you I wouldn’t be the jaw-droppingly cool chicka I am today. I’m grateful for everything.

PS: I scheduled this blog post so you could see it before work.

Resist the urge to eat the plain cooked pastry. Mostly. You can have a nibble.

Pastry = 150g plain flour, 75g cold butter, cubed, pinch of salt, water. Mix the flour and salt, then rub the butter in so it goes all crumbly. Add just enough water to bind it all together and make a pastry. You’ve seen pastry before; you know the sort of thing.

Pastry pasted with pesto! Lol.

Press your pastry into a pie dish, prick it with a fork and bake it at 180°C for 20-30 minutes. BAM. Piecrust done. Brush it with pesto.

Tier 1.

BAM. Roast eggplant.

Tier 2.

BAM. Roast capsicum.

Tier 3 because why not?

DOUBLE BAM. Sundried tomatoes and crumbled feta.

The unifying power of eggs.

BAM. Pour some mixed eggs over those suckas (6, to be precise).

The final and most glorious BAM.

Bake it for about 30 minutes. That right there is a big ol’ pie of awesome. Healthy breakfast; packable lunch; delicious, full of vegetables and protein, all-round nice guy quiche. BAM.

Pause for applause.

To recap:

1. Got 10 balls of red cotton for an Xmas present: the balls turned out to have 48,000,000 metres of yarn each, so I made two tanks and an Everlasting Bagstopper.
2. The bagstopper rocks on; the two tanks shrank in such a way that they no longer fitted. BOO. I wore them anyway, persuading myself Nobody Will Notice.
3. Eventually wanted to make a dress: decided the red was perfect and the tanks were dead in the water anyway. UNRAVEL PARTY!
4. Unravelled, washed, loosened, reballed.
5. Cast on! Made meself a dress, with the enchanting name of
   111-3 tailored dress in ”Safran” with lace pattern and crochet borders.
6. This took me 8 weeks and was waaaaay too big. I was swimming in it. Before I had a chance to start convincing myself It Was Fine, Nobody Will Notice, I unravelled. I like knitting, I like knitting, I like knitting.
7. Cast on again, January 1. Cast off January 27. BOOYEAH! That’s some wicked fast knitting right there, dudes.
8. Block, dry: wear to brunch.

Look! Look at this!

Holy cow a porch mushroom!

Cavorting with delight about dress and mushroom.

Is that another mushroom?

Action shot

Big Red Pot

Okay, maybe not more. The wok and the enormous mixing bowl probably are equal contenders. But I love that dern pot. Originally bought for the purposes of making no-knead bread (you heat a big, cast-iron core like this baby in the oven for a while before the bread dough is ready, then sling the dough in and the lid keeps the steam in and you end up with a beautiful crispy crust) (note to self: cook that bread ASAP), there is very little this pot doesn’t do now. Couscous, pasta, soup, rice, curries: it does it all. Stovetop, barbecue, oven, anywhere good times are had. Lately it’s been getting a lot of exercise serving my other big red love at the moment:

Rat-a-tat-red

Ratatouille. Through an odd set of circumstances we needn’t go into right now (although it involved a gnome, some compromising photos and me being in the right place at the right time), I ended up with an abundance of zucchini and eggplants. When life gives you lemons, you make preserved lemons. When life gives you shitloads of the nightshade family, you make ratatouille. My ratatouille recipe is beautifully simple: roughly chop eggplants, zucchini, capsicum and onions and tumble into your big red pot. Add a cup or so of pitted olives if you have them. Then add two tins of tomatoes, and a generous mix of the herbs and spices that fire your big red love. If you’re me, it’s paprika, cumin seeds, white pepper, salt and more paprika; then you go out and snip some thyme, basil, parsley and marjoram from the garden. Quantities are a little vague: chop up enough to stop said herbs going to seed. Mix well, then add more spices and herbs because you’ve just realised how much ratatouille you’ve made. Seriously, one eggplant, one zucchini, one onion and one capsicum doesn’t seem like much until you get chopping, then it pulls some weird loaves-and-fishes shit and BAM you’ve got a big red pot of big red everything.

Mix well — throw in an empty-tomato-tin’s worth of water for good measure — and put the big red lid on your big red pot. Bake it for about two hours or until you have to go do something outside the house and switch the oven on. Once hot, my big red pot will keep on baking for quite some time after the oven is switched off.

I’ve been making truckloads of this stuff. It freezes really well, so an awkward abundance is magically transformed into stockpiled provisions. We’ve used it:

• puréed as a pizza sauce;
• tossed with pasta;
• mixed with black beans and chillies for burrito frijoles;
• tossed into shakshouka;
• as a cold salsa on wraps;
• served with crusty bread as a fantastic meal all by itself.

Seriously, about twenty minutes’ chopping, then ignore it in the oven for two hours, and you’ve got meals for over a week. Awesome. Tonight I came home and M had taken it to the next level of big red glory:

Oh my big red stars...

Layer ratatouille with lasagna sheets and cheesy sauce, then top with cheese and bake for an hour and you have a lush hot lasagna fit for a bethini.

A brief snap before the elusive lasagna disappears into its natural habitat...

Holy crap, so awesome. You wouldn’t believe how lush, flavoursome, cheesy and delicious this was. The noodles cooked to a firm perfection, the provolone savoury and stringy, the ratatouille thick and rich. Big red love.

Oh, while we’re talking about big red loves:

Red red red red red red red

Recycled Red Redux rolls readily on! Nearly up to the waist already.