Cruel and Unusual Geography

Love this: a German street artist makes ghillie suits and wears them in shops.

He (?) says:

Urban Camouflage deals with the question how to camouflage
oneself and one’s identity in the urban space. Our costumes are
inspired by the «ghillie suits», the military camouflage suit. It was
an adventure to wear the suit in the stores because of the conflicts
with the employees, the reaction of the customers and also to see
the pretty well camouflage effect in a real situation.

See more photos and videos at Urban Camouflage.

The other day I wrote about how the Edmonds Cook Book is easily adapted for some types of allergy-free baking. However, making substitutions to adapt “normal” recipes to allergy-free diets can be a challenge, especially when you’re starting out and learning how to prepare food for an allergic person.

The New Zealand Allergy Cookbook has been written by New Zealanders with New Zealand ingredients and tastes in mind.

I’m a bit of a fan of the New Zealand Allergy Cookbook. It has some great recipes — everyone in the house loved the Straw Cake —and is really clear about the allergens in each recipe. Every recipe has a list of the allergens it is free of, so if for example you have a child with both nut and dairy allergies it is easy to see if a particular recipe is suitable for them.

If you’re starting out on the “allergy journey” this is a great resource to have in the kitchen with you. It’s also nice-looking enough to make a good gift.

When we first started having to cook and bake for allergy-free diets we were just inventing recipes out of thin air. The results were often pretty awful, but thankfully the kids seemed happy with what they got to eat. Finally I realised that most “normal” recipes can be adapted to an allergy-aware diet with just a little modification.

After over 100 years, the Edmonds Cook Book can still be relied on for good kiwi baking.

For example, a lot of baking that calls for eggs can be just as good with the eggs left out, or with a tablespoon of cooking oil substituted for each egg. You can get away with this where the egg is a small part of the recipe — there’s no way I can make an egg-free pavlova or souffle.

Gluten-free cooking and baking is pretty straightforward with the gluten-free flour substitute I use.

I’ve realised what almost every kiwi has realised before me: the recipes in the Edmonds Cook Book are as reliable as any you’ll find anywhere.

Generations of travelling Kiwis have made fun of English beer.  Their beer is, according to popular legend, warm, flat and weak. Conversely, legions of English tourists and ex-pats have derided our colonial brews as freezing, fizzy lemonade.

The differences between these styles is quite nicely discussed in this post at the Malthouse blog.

Personally I’m a Real Ale, hand pump, Beer Engine kind of guy.

With half of our household on a gluten-free regime we can’t use “proper” (i.e. wheat) flour for baking cakes and biscuits as we’d like. We’ve tried a number of commercial alternative flour mixes with variable results, and have come back to making our own. Here’s what I use:

For each cup of flour in the recipe, use ⅓ cup tapioca flour, ⅔ cup rice flour, and 1 teaspoon of Xanthan gum.

I prefer the brown rice flour. It handles and tastes the same, but has more fibre and vitamins.

The secret ingredient is really the Xanthan gum. It may seem expensive, but you only use a little at a time and it really does make all the difference. Without it gluten-free flours are sticky and unpleasant to handle, biscuits run out flat, and breads are dry and crumbly. While Xanthan gum won’t make the gluten-free flour behave or taste exactly like wheat flour, it brings it close enough to make recipes work.

Important tip: mix the Xanthan gum with the other flours before adding to any wet ingredients, or it just won’t mix in properly.

Here’s a spectacular flourless chocolate cake that’s suitable for all sorts of allergies. This is obviously no good for dairy-free or egg-free diets, but almost any other allergy can be accommodated by choosing appropriate chocolate. We tend to use Kinnerton for its nut-free guarantee, but also have enjoyed Trade Aid chocolate in the past.

It’s great to come across a recipe where we have all the ingredients, it’s not too complicated, it’s allergy-friendly, and it is just so decadently rich!

Chocolate Valentino by Chef Wan from his book, Sweet Treats

450 grams of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
140 grams butter
5 eggs, separated

Melt chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Stir until smooth. Cool.
Grease a 22cm springform pan. Beat egg yolks and stir into cooled chocolate.
Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold a quarter of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Fold in remaining egg whites.
Pour batter into a pan and bake for 25 minutes at 190°C or until done. Cool.

Note: The Valentino is a heart-shaped version of this cake. Bake a Valentino in a heart-shaped pan. This is a very dense chocolate cake.

If, like me, you don’t have kitchen scales, 140g is about half-way between a quarter and a third of a 500g block of butter, or just a tad less than the third 50g mark on the packet.