The way of the toastie, or, a meal greater than the sum of its parts

In the senior common room at my high school the toastie maker held pride of place. It was a fetching 70s burnt orange, thick with desiccated cheese meltings, and had lost its non-stick surface, flake by tasty flake, years ago. Arguments ensued as to whether it was acceptable to use canned spaghetti as a filling as the gross tomato sauce got stuck to everything, including the handle, and could only be removed with steel wool. In winter, if you didn’t get in early to use the toastie maker, you were stuck without lunch until your next free period or had to suffice yourself with whatever tepid pie-related product was left at the tuck shop. In summer, it would start to smell and we’d all get kicked out until we promised to keep the common room clean, Miss. This was all Very Serious Business.

 I did a quick ask around recently to find out people’s favourite toastie concoctions, be they made in a machine, or with a toastie press, or in a frying pan as below. Perhaps you might like to try:

• The Sunday Roast – roast meat, smooshed up roast vegetables, a dollop of gravy, quince jelly or mint jelly and lots of pepper on wheat bread
• The King – bacon, peanut butter, banana and maple syrup
• The Dad – cheese, chopped and drained pineapple, chutney (chow chow, piccalilli) and a side of bad jokes
• The Primary School Holidays Special – baked beans and grated cheese on white bread with a big glass of Fanta on the side
• The Hilary – gouda and thinly sliced pear, dipped in something nice like aioli with a sprig of parsley, because parsley makes everything fancy
• The Willy Wonka (with apologies to Katherine C’A, whose adventures in extreme toastie making cannot be surpassed) – confectionary of your choice, for instance, Creme Eggs, eskimos, candy or K bars

.... or you could just have a two course toastie meal?

The Americano

This is the original – bread, cheese and butter. If you like appliances, use a sandwich press or Panini maker 

rather than a frying pan.

• White bread
• Actual, proper butter
• Cheese(s) of your liking – a sharp cheddar is good

Butter the bread. If you like extra flavour, put a scraping of mustard or mayonnaise on the non-buttered side of the bread. Slice the cheese thinly. Warm up a frying pan, adding a bit of butter if it’s non-stick (or if you just really like butter). Place a slice of bread butter side down in the pan, arrange the cheese pleasingly on top, and put the last bit of bread on top, butter side up. Cook on a low temperature so that the cheese melts but the butter doesn’t burn. Chop it into triangles, serve with a big slice of pickled gherkin, a little toothpick flag stuck in the bread and one of those paper napkins with red and white checks.

The Dessert Toastie

This is best made in a proper toastie maker so that all the lovely squidgy bits stay inside.

• Bread – white or cinnamon
• Cream cheese
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• A liberal sprinkle of cinnamon
• A sad banana
• Chocolate chips
•  Red jam – plum, raspberry or similar – or a few frozen berries

Butter the bread. Mix the cream cheese (amount of your choosing, depending on how much you care about your weight) with the sugar and cinnamon. Mash the banana with a fork, and stir through the chocolate chips. On the unbuttered side of one slice of bread spread the cream cheese, the fill with the banana goop, and put a little dollop of jam or a few frozen berries on top. Cook to the desired level of crunchiness.

A word about hot things: hot toasties burn. Molten cheese draped across your lower lip is a less than ideal situation. Even worse are the burns you get when you heat up sugary items beyond their usual level of tolerance – eg, jam. Go slow, don’t be greedy and definitely don’t overfill, and you will emerge whole and unscathed.

Winter soups, or, something that’s good for what ails you

Having spent the vast majority of the university holidays sick – how unfair is that - I have eaten very little except for soup, because soup is easy to make and cheap and good for the soul and with enough chilli and onion will kick the crap out of whatever is living in your chest and head. NB: Chicken Soup for the Soul is not very good for the soul or the temper, but quite good at propping up the ad-hoc media centre when the earthquakes have left your house on a lean. Did you know they have trademarked the term “where people come to help people”? Self help books make me want to spew.

Soup, especially soup of the ‘throw it in a pot and leave it for a bit’ variety, is helpful on winter nights or afternoons when you need to heat up the house and the belly. It freezes very well, which is handy when it is far too cold to cook and the prospect of Big Gary’s for the third night in a row is a bit daunting. 

Protip 1 – if you add lots of things like lentils or barley, keep an eye on the pot as they will absorb lots of water and may end up burning on the bottom. When left overnight, the pulses with swell up and leave you with gloopy stew so upon reheating you might need to add more water.  

Protip 2 - if you over-salt the soup, you can somewhat fix things by adding grated or diced potato, or by adding a little sugar or acid (vinegar, lemon juice) to balance out the flavour.  

Protip 3 – for those of you who are super lazy, the cheap packets of King brand soup mix, with the addition of frozen vegetables, will feed a flat for less than $5.

Hearty beef stew

500g cheap stewing steak, sometimes delightfully called ‘gravy beef’

2 onions

1 carrot

2 sticks of celery

1 small swede OR 2 big potatoes

1 medium parsnip

¼ cup barley, rice or lentils (uncooked)

1 litre stock OR 1 litre of water + 2 stock cubes of your choosing

1 or 2 bayleaves (optional)

Chop the meat into 2cm cubes. Trim off all the fat and any gristly bits and throw them away – seriously, they’re gross and add nothing to a good stew experience. Wash and, if you can be bothered, peel the carrot, swede (or potatoes), and parsnip. Chop all the veggies into whatever sizes or shapes you think are nicest. Dump everything into a pot. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 1 ½ hours or until the meat is nice and tender. Make sure you don’t boil the crap out of it the whole time or the meat with go chewy and yuck instead of tender and lovely.

Curried pumpkin soup

500g (ish) pumpkin – add more for a thicker soup

2 onions

2 cloves of garlic

2 T butter or oil

2 t cumin

2T red curry paste

1 can coconut cream or milk

1 litre stock OR 1 litre water and 2 stock cubes

Peanut butter (optional)

Remove the skin and seeds from the pumpkin. You will need to do this with a knife, not a peeler. If you have a terrible knife you will now want to take a break to nurse your blisters and the bit of finger you just chopped off. Chop the flesh roughly into cubes. Peel and slice the onions and garlic. 

Heat the butter or oil in your soup pot, then cook the onions, garlic, cumin and curry paste gently until the onions have started to soften. Throw in the pumpkin, stir it around for a minute, then add the coconut stuff and the milk. Bring to the boil then simmer gently until the pumpkin is tender.

When it’s ready, add a massive spoon of peanut butter and stir until it has become one with the soup – it will bring out the nice nutty flavour of the pumpkin. Take the pot off the heat then mash the crap out of it with a masher, or zap it with a stick blender – be careful though, you don’t want the nurses laughing at you when you arrive at the 24 Hour Surgery with molten orange goop on your face. Return it to the heat, taste it, add more curry paste or cumin if you want, then keep it warm until you serve it.

A word about bastard pumpkins: Taking the skin off a pumpkin is a nightmare with a crappy knife. A sneaky solution to this is to remove the seeds, pierce the skin a bit with your knife, then microwave the pumpkin for 3 - 5 minutes. This should make life much easier. Pumpkin seeds also grow very well – throw them on a compost heap and chances are in a few months you will have a bounteous supply.

Mulled Wine and Brownies – or, distraction from the base realities of a Christchurch winter

Congratulations on making it through what must be the worst assessment period and most hotly anticipated holiday period in UC history. By now, you will have had time to realise that your student flat isn’t all it was (ever?) cracked up to be – mouldy wardrobes, windows that don’t quite shut ever, and appalling hot water pressure. The earthquakes have no doubt buggered up any intention you had of lighting the fire, never mind those massive holes in the plaster. My personal low – waking up in the middle of the night because the condensation had frozen to the inside of the window and then fallen onto my duvet and was slowly melting onto my legs. Good times. I’m not quite sure why living in a damp, musty Petri dish is considered a rite of passage but there you go, hopefully our immune systems are better for it.

Consider these some winter warmers to be enjoyed by the dusky light of a two bar heater as you wear your polarfleece onesie and fingerless mitts and wrap yourself in your poly-fill Warehouse duvet, wishing that you had never told your Mum and Dad that you were independent enough to go flatting but would still to be sent a monthly Pak’n’Save voucher please. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that lighting a roll your own cigarette off the heater element isn’t all class.

Mulled wine

This is like sangria for wintertime, and another good example of kitchen bucket chemistry. You can make it however you like (at home the recipe depends on what’s in the cupboard) but here’s a good place to start. Mulled wine doesn’t have to be drunk all at once (honest) – if you leave it out overnight, or drain off the wine and store it in the fridge, it’s reheated quickly in the microwave or on the stovetop. Just don’t ever turn the heat up too high – you don’t want to boil the alcohol off, do you?

• 2 bottles (1.5 litres) of cheap, full-bodied red wine (eg shiraz, merlot or cab sav, or dodgy cask stuff)
• 2 oranges, juiced then chopped
• Peel of 1 lemon
• Two sticks of cinnamon
• 1 cup of sugar (the darker the better)
• 5 - 10 whole cloves (optional)

Easy but longer version for people who have a tendency to forget what’s on the stove: Throw everything in a big pot. Heat gently, without boiling, for at least half an hour. Taste, and add more things if you feel like it – you may need more sugar, I’ve been a bit stingy in the above list as if it’s oversweetened it’s a bit rank and hard to undo. Serve. Easy.

Slightly more labour intensive but quicker and nicer version: throw everything except for the wine in a pot. Add just enough red wine to cover the sugar. Heat it gently until the sugar has completely dissolved, then turn up the heat and boil for 3 or 4 minutes. Turn down the heat, add the rest of the wine and heat gently without boiling for 5 or 10 minutes.

Other spices that you can use in a mulled wine include star anise, whole white or black peppercorns, allspice, pieces of ginger and / or a couple of bay leaves. Chai or orange herbal teabags are good too.

Mug Brownie

More like your soft, squishy American brownie than anything firm and slice-y, these totally eliminate the need to wash up any bowls and spoons.

• 4 tablespoons plain flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar (any type, but darker = richer)
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder (the baking stuff, not the hot chocolate stuff)
• a pinch of salt
• 2 tablespoons oil (eg sunflower, canola, nothing too strong tasting)
• 2 tablespoons water
• ¼ teaspoon vanilla essence (optional)

In a mug, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and salt with a fork. Make a little well in the centre add the water, oil and essence. Mix it all up thoroughly, making sure there are no dry bits or lumps. Microwave it on high for a minute; you may need to go longer depending on your microwave, but you want it to be wettish in the middle. Let it sit for a couple of minutes, then nom.

Extra for experts – swap out the vanilla essence for something else, like peppermint essence or a tiny bit of orange peel. Or, add a few (a FEW) chocolate chips to the mix before cooking. Or, splash some milk or cream over the cooked brownie. I have heard tell that experiments with peanut butter or nutella can end well. And so on.

A word about measuring stuff: Although I’m sure someone along the line told you, it’s worth reiterating that when measuring dry ingredients you need to make sure that the measurement is level. Add four heaped tablespoons of flour to the brownie and you are likely to end up with chocolatey playdough or a smouldering heap of brown, nice-smelling glue.