Lemon Marmalade

When life gives you lemons…

I’ve made marmalade in the past, from oranges, grapefruit and even lemons. I turned to trusty Uncle Google for a recipe, and there seemed to be conflicting messages about lemon to sugar to water ratio, and also how to extract the pectin. So I’m going it alone. Let’s see how my recipe works:

1kg lemons

2kg sugar

2l water

I sliced and removed the pith and pips from the lemons, and put them in the water to soak overnight. To extract the pectin from the pith and pips I placed them in a small sieve in a small container of water. Most of the recipe books say “place the pith and pips in a small muslin bag” but who has those lying about the house? I mean, really? Hopefully this will work instead. And yes, the water is included in the 2l of water mentioned above. 

The next day, I added the pectin-rich water to the mix, and boiled the whole lot up for 1½ hours. At this stage it’s wise to put a saucer in the fridge for your set testing. I then added the sugar. At this point I put the jars into the oven to sterilise. Then I returned it to a fast boil for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to stop it catching on the bottom of the pan; and started testing for a set by putting a small amount on the saucer, letting it cool, and seeing if it wrinkles when you push it with a spoon – the classic way to check that it will solidify when it’s cooled. After three goes, it set, so total cook time was 2¼ hours. 

I let the mix cool down a bit before putting it into jars, which is always a messy business…for some reason some of it always dribbles down the outside of the jar. It made six jars. 

Cooking Class

We’d booked a Polynesian cookery class for Tuesday morning, so we were up with the lark(-ish) to get breakfast (This proved to be a mistake) before heading into town and finding the location on Rue de Paul Gauguin. He's kind of a big deal in these parts. 

We located the place easily in daylight, and were greeted by cheffe Albane and her assistant Marine. We met two women from the USA who were also taking the tour. She explained what we were going to do, then took us back downstairs into the market, where she chatted to, and shopped at, various stalls in the marché, all the while explaining the products we were selecting, and in some cases (e.g. the rambutan) trying before buying. She explained about the non-food parts of the marché, and we noted some places to visit again this afternoon. Then we headed back to her kitchen, and donned black aprons. “This isn’t Masterchef, is it?” I enquired. “Is one of us going to be sent home?”    

Albane explained about the uses of coconut and its importance to the economy of Polynesia. We kinda knew all this already, having been subjected to the same lecture in both Tonga and Rarotonga. We were preparing two sweet baked dishes, a cake and a macaroon, under Albane’s direction. Once these were in the oven, we moved on to fruits and savouries. I was in charge of cutting the thon (tuna) that we’d bought in the market to make the i’a ota, the local version of the dish known as ota ika or ceviche around the world – basically, raw fish marinaded in lime juice and coconut milk. Once that was prepared, we were ready to sit down and eat. It was still only 11:30 and I was not very hungry having had an omelette for breakfast, but we tried everything, including green mango with Chinese spices, the cake and macaroons we’d made earlier, and the i’a ota; also the local fruits, a type of pasty made with pâté, breadfruit, cooked banana and taro dipped in a marinade sauce of coconut and garlic. By far the hit of our efforts was the i’a ota, but the rest was good, too. We sat around, chatting and eating – Polynesians have no set courses, and don’t distinguish between sweet and savoury, so everything is served at once, and you can eat meat followed by sweet followed by savoury again. 

By about midday we were sated, so we took the cakes we’d made, boxed up by Albane, back to the hotel.

After a bit of a rest, we decided to head back to the market, and investigated shops selling t-shirts, wraps, and pearls (Tahiti is famous for its cultured pearls). We also visited the pearl museum and learnt about the history of pearls and  the cultured pearl-making process. As we made our way back to the hotel, the air felt distinctly muggy and hot, so we may be in for some thunderstorm activity…hopefully overnight so it will clear the air a bit.

At a little after five, we headed upstairs to the rooftop bar, called Reeftop (I see what they did there), to drink cocktails and watch the sunset.

 

Rice Salad

 OK, so I had a go at the rice salad, and instead of just chucking things in to see if that's about right, I actually measured out the ingredients first. This tasted OK, so follow it, but feel free to add more or less ingredients as you see fit. The 120g measurement for mung bean sprouts is because I bought a 120g packet. I actually made half these quantities but have doubled up for convenience. 

Feeds 4 (ish)

300g rice (I used basmati, but try brown if you prefer)
1 tbsp curry powder
2 tbsp cider vinegar
120g mung bean sprouts
1 green pepper, diced
150g raisins
150g peanuts

1 tbsp poppy seeds
1 tbsp brown sugar
salt and pepper

Cook the rice with the curry powder and vinegar. Drain and cool the rice, then add the rest of the ingredients and mix together. 

For the hippies amongst my readership (are there any?), this is vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free.

Enjoy!

 

Mushroom Burgers

Whilst Jonny and Sarah were staying with us I had to come up with a range of vegetarian alternatives for Sarah when the rest of us were eating meat. In some cases, such as tom yum soup, this can be easily effected by substituting in tofu for chicken. When we had a steak night, I made a mushroom burger for Sarah. I didn’t really measure out the ingredients, so this is more of a guide than set in stone, but here’s the recipe:

This makes two good-sized burgers.

6 portobello mushrooms

¼ red onion

1 slice of bread

I egg white

Herbs

Salt and pepper

Coarsely chop the mushrooms, finely dice the red onion, and breadcrumb the bread. Mix all the ingredients together, season to taste, and add in any other herbs – oregano or thyme are probably good flavour combinations. Form into burgers either by hand or using a ring (I find a ring is better because you can squash the mix together well so it doesn’t fall apart), and bake in the oven at 200°C for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

The Bake-Off

August 26^th is Daffodil Day in New Zealand – the main fundraising day for the New Zealand Cancer Society. My employer is a major supporter of this event, and runs fundraising competitions and activities throughout August.

This year, our department decided to have a bake-off – a cake-baking competition. 10 people entered, and presented their cakes/baked entries on Monday morning, which were then sold to the rest of the Risk team, and indeed anyone who passed by, at $2 a slice.

One of our number has a daughter who bakes cakes for a hobby, and has a lot of cake and icing equipment which he was able to utilise. It’s not all that surprising that he took the top prize (for appearance – we hadn’t cut into the cakes before the judging):

I baked one of my signature cakes – orange almond cake:

The remaining competitors put forth cakes of varying degrees of skill, but all of them tasted good, so I’m told. 

We raised over $350 with the event, so a good effort all round. Next week we have another event – a quiz night, Battle Of The Daffodils.

Smoked Butter

The recipe I was cooking last night called for smoked butter. I'd never come across this until now, but, slave to culinary trends that I am, I took myself along to Moore Wilson's and found that they had smoked butter on the shelves. And not just any old smoked butter, but Smoked Butter by Al Brown, so it must be good!

I was using it in an accompaniment to my fillet steak - cauliflower purée. The recipe called for the cauliflower to be cooked in the butter and milk, and then purée'd with some of the milk and butter, until the desired consistency was found. This I duly did.

The end result looked like this:

But I was left with a bowl full of the milk/butter mixture. What to do?

Last week we'd had some of the spring's first asparagus, and very nice it was too. As is my habit, I keep the harder bits that you break off the end as too tough, and use these for soup. Today I made cream of asparagus soup, with the remaining smoked milk/butter. It was lovely.

Welcome to Rory's World Of Cookery!

Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

Last weekend we drove into Newtown, one of Wellington’s lower-rent suburbs, to visit a shop called Brew House. They sell mostly equipment to do with home brewing and wine making, but do a side line in cheese-making equipment as well. Some months ago, Nicola went on a cheese-making course and has been itching to put her knowledge into practice.

Armed with the Mad Millie kit, and after reading the instructions, we sought out sheep’s milk at Moore Wilson, in order to make halloumi. Unfortunately they had none, although I’m sure I’ve seen it there before. So we bought cow’s silver-top (full-cream) milk instead. I also spotted that they stock buffalo milk, which will be handy when mozzarella is on the cheese-making menu.

Cheese-making in progress

The cheese-making process is a mysterious art which requires special utensils, and magic. Nicola will tell you all about it.

At the end of the process, we had six small halloumi cheeses. We had some for lunch last Sunday, and more for lunch today. They taste of halloumi, fry up well, and are generally successful.

Morning Tea

During the tournament, the bank I work for have been running various competitions for tickets to matches, merchandise etc. In the final week, the Risk department held a competition to host a morning tea. “Morning tea” is a New Zealand tradition and usually consists of sausage rolls, served with the inevitable tomato sauce (never ketchup!) Each team within the department were allocated a pair of countries around whose cuisine their offering was to be themed. We were allotted Scotland and Italy, so prepared a table for each country. Scotland cuisine included a haggis, Irn Bru, shortbread, and a microwaved Mars bar (as we had no deep fat fryer to prepare the Mars bar in the traditional Scottish way).

The Italy table had pasta, pizza, biscotti (made by me) and cupcakes decorated with Italian flags.

It all came together remarkably well, and at the end we were judged the winners of the competition, and were rewarded with the respect and admiration of our peers.

After the judging, we scoffed the lot in pretty short order.

Housewarming

Another blog about housewarming! This afternoon we had our second housewarming party in New Zealand, and invited people from the various activities we now take part in – work (obviously), dancing, singing, and quizzing. We again mulled some wine and had some friends round to help us consume it.

I made some hummous to my traditional recipe. I'm not sure this is totally original, but this is the one I use and I’ve had a few requests for this (Nicola took some along to her choir one night not long ago, and they seemed to enjoy it)... so here it is in all its glory:

1 can chickpeas (400 grammes seems to be the usual size)

Juice of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons tahini

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 garlic clove, blanched

½ teaspoon salt

Pepper

This is the base recipe. I find blanching the garlic clove (put it in a cup or ramekin and pour boiling water on it and let it sit for a few minutes) helps to reduce the bitter garlic taste. Put all the ingredients in a food processor and whizz it up for about a minute.

For added flavour, I also make the following varieties – add these before mixing: sundried tomato (add about 8 sundried tomatoes); sweet chilli (add 12 peppadew peppers, and a hot chilli); lemon and coriander (add the zest of the lemon you’re going to juice, and a bunch of coriander leaves).

It generally tastes better if you can give it a few hours for the flavours to develop - this is particularly true of the lemon and coriander, which always seem to taste better a day after making it.

Now you can make hummous like me!

So a jolly afternoon was had, and everyone got to see our new house. Thanks to all those who brought gifts! When the summer comes we’ll be able to entertain outside on our deck, get the barbie out and have a few beers. 

Lady Marmalade

I had a notion to make some marmalade, so I looked around t’internets and found, then adapted someone else’s recipe.  Here’s what I made:

1.3kg oranges (this turned out to be 5 large navel oranges)

1.3kg sugar

1.25l water

Juice of 1 lemon

I sliced the oranges very thinly, then put them in a pot with the water and the lemon juice to soak for 24 hours. This, apparently, allows the pectin to develop. I then boiled it up (with a lid on the pot) for 40 minutes, added the sugar, and cooked it at a rolling boil, uncovered, for a further 40 minutes. 

Then I started testing the set every 10 minutes, by putting a small amount on a refrigerated plate and sticking it back in the fridge for two minutes. At the 4^th go (after about another 30 minutes) I got the classic wrinkles after a couple of minutes in the fridge, and stopped cooking. I let it stand and cool a bit for a further 30 minutes before ladling it into jars.

These quantities made 5 jars of marmalade, which was handy, as that's how many empty jars I had. 

This morning I tried it on my toast, and it worked! It had formed a proper jelly, and tasted nice and orangey, and wasn’t too sweet. This has been much more successful than my previous marmalading attempts which have either failed to set properly, or ended up by being a gloopy, sticky something that bore no real resemblance to real marmalade – possibly due to my being suckered in to using preserving sugar when I should have stuck to the ordinary granulated. I think the pre-soaking helped as well, so I’ll continue to use this technique.

Chocolate Ice Cream

So, I thought I’d make some chocolate ice cream. I looked up a few recipes on the internet, and eventually settle on one. Then I adapted it, because when I was making the custard, I thought it didn’t look dark enough brown...so instead of adding 150g of dark chocolate, I chucked the whole 250g bar in.

500 ml cream

250 ml milk

250 g chocolate

110 g caster sugar

4 egg yolks

Usual method to make the custard – heat the cream and milk gently, and add the chocolate, and stir until completely melted and almost boiling. Whisk the egg yolks together with the sugar (I now have a handy rotary whisk to do this with), and add a bit of the chocolate cream at a time, mixing as you go. Then return the whole lot to the saucepan and heat gently until it thickens (the proverbial “coats the back of a wooden spoon” test).

Tasted it tonight – it was yummy! Nicola didn’t like it though, so I’ll just have to eat it all myself.

Barbie Time

We were up with the lark as we had a lot to do in one day. To start with, I checked that I had received my first pay from the job…and yes, the credit was there on our bank account. We had already made a plan to celebrate this event – breakfast at Matterhorn, so off we toddled, down to Cuba Street. When we got there we found that it wasn’t open yet, so we got a weekend paper and went to a café for a coffee, whilst we waited for 10 o’clock.

Shortly after 10 we returned to Matterhorn, found them open, and ordered breakfast. Very good it was too, and I’m sure we’ll be back to check out the rest of the menu at a later date.

Next on the agenda was shopping. We have two events over this weekend – a barbecue on Saturday evening, and a lunch tomorrow, so we went down to the butcher’s, the fish shop, and the supermarket to stock up on everything we needed for these.

For the barbie, we had decided on hamburgers in wraps, rather than the more prosaic white buns. So, back home to make the burger mixture. Early in the evening we prepared ourselves with swimming gear, loaded up the picnic bags with beverages, burgers, sausages, salad and wraps, and headed down to Thorndon Pool, where the barbie was being held. The raison d’être was that two of Nicola’s Treasury colleagues were leaving to return to the UK after 2 years in Wellington…so there were a lot of Treasury folk about, some of whom I’d met before, so we were able to be sociable! The pool is heated, so there were no problems with the water, but the wind had picked up (those of you following the New Zealand test match against Pakistan probably know all about this) and it was a little chilly outside, particularly in the shade. Nicola braved the pool, but as I’d already started on the beer, and it was cooling down, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour. They had an inflatable floating assault-course type thing on the pool, like they use in Wipeout! Which Nicola had a go on. Unfortunately I didn’t get my camera out in time to get a shot of her wiping out, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Two guys took over the barbecue management and started cooking everything that had been piled on the side:

Afterwards we straggled home up the hill, in the teeth of the oncoming gale, for a quiet night in. Tomorrow – further adventures in the kitchen!

Lunch On The Terrace

Well, my life has got so boring now that I’m in employment, and I’m aware that I haven’t blogged for a week, so I thought I’d share with you the menu for our lunch today, when we invited one of Nicola’s work friends, who’s also been a stalwart of our quiz team successes:

Sesame-crusted seared tuna

With wasabi mash and chimichurri sauce.

Moussaka

With Greek salad

Pear tarte tatin

With cinnamon ice cream.

I was watching Masterchef UK the other day, and the bit where they send the contestants off to work in a professional kitchen (it was Asia De Cuba) involved one of the cooks making seared tuna, with the above accompaniments. I decided to improve on this by crusting the tuna in sesame seeds rather than just salt & pepper, and cooking it in sesame oil. I’m told (by my highly biased audience) that it worked.

Chimichurri sauce is basically a South American version of salsa verde. With added chillis. I may “improve” this again next time by using fresh green chillis rather than dried red ones.

Moussaka – well, you don’t need a receipt for this, but it does get to use up one of our surfeit of cinnamon quills.

Talking of which, I made cinnamon ice cream to accompany the tarte tatin. I looked up various recipes on the interwebs, and tried to synthesise them into something that would work for me. Whilst I can hardly claim this as original, I adapted the quantities and such, so it’s not a direct copy of anyone else’s as far as I can see; I can also tell you that it works:

450 ml cream*

150 ml half-fat, semi-skimmed, “slim”, milk – not the grey stuff

125g caster sugar

6 egg yolks**

2 cinnamon quills

Put the cream, milk and cinnamon in a saucepan and bring to the boil, then leave it to cool for 30 minutes to infuse. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl until pale yellow. Strain a little bit of the cream into the egg mixture, then reheat the rest of the cream to boiling point, let it cool for a couple of minutes, and strain the rest in gradually, mixing it in all the time to stop the eggs scrambling. Pour the mix back into the saucepan and heat gently until it’s thick and coats the back of a spoon, but don’t let it boil.

Chill overnight (I do this by pouring a stiff G&T and watching the telly, but each to their own ;-))

Then churn the custard in your ice cream machine, until…er…you’ve made ice cream. Simples! ;-)

So there you are. A blog about our life in New Zealand that also includes recipes…what’s not to like?!

* NZers don’t seem to have the concept of single and double cream, but it looks like single to me.

** Everyone says “What do you do with the whites?” You can make a pav if you like, but frankly I don’t, really. I just flush them down the sink. They are the least economically useful part of the egg (apart from the shell) and I don’t mind chucking them out.

Sunny Day

On Thursday and Friday, the sun came out and the temperature in Wellington headed up and started to nudge 20°; whilst the rest of the country basked in the mid-20s, Wellington is always a few degrees cooler – in every way! I decided that the time had come to put modesty and all feelings of decorum to one side, and expose the lower halves of my legs to an unsuspecting Wellingtonian public.

Predictably, come Saturday, the sky clouded over and, whilst it wasn’t cold, it wasn’t as warm as the last couple of days. We had guests over for dinner, so I cooked a Mediterranean-themed selection of tapas and we had a relaxed evening centred on the consumption of wine in industrial quantities.

On Sunday morning, the weather had changed again, back to sunny skies. We decided to take advantage of this and go back to visit the Botanical Gardens, which were in the grip of winter last time we went. Now, the roses are out in the rose garden, and we were able to sit outside the café with carefree abandon. We took lots of picture of the roses…here’s one:

A rose

After that, we headed back home for a spot of lunch, then out again to the bustling metropolis for retail opportunities, to buy appropriate summer footwear for the coming months – you can only walk so far in flip-flops (or “jandals” as they’re known here) without your feet starting to ache. Now we feel as if we’re heading into summer properly…or “Christmas” as they call it. It does seem odd to see all the stuff usually associated with midwinter in the shops as the weather warms up…doubtless we’ll get used to it.

Later in the afternoon the weather turned back to grey overcast, so we stayed in and watched the All Blacks hammer the Scots; then The Return Of The King, followed by Kung Fu Panda. Both very good films, for entirely different reasons.

If I'd Known You Were Coming...

…I’d’ve baked a cake.

Tonight, we went to the Treasury “Crate & Plate” competition – participants are asked to provide either a home-brewed beer (the “crate”) or home-baked food (the “plate”). The set up was for up to 50 people to judge the entries, made up of (i) the 20 participants  in the 3 categories (beer, non-beer drinks, food); (ii) around 30 other judges who bought a judging ticket for $10; and (iii) other folk who could buy home-brewed beer for a nominal $1, and also all the usual refreshments provided by the Kai In The Sky staff canteen on the 14^th floor of the Treasury building.

As well as the food provided by the contestants, there were also other nibbles – dips, cheese and nuts provided from the sale of tickets.

We entered one of my cakes, a Yorkshire Parkin from this recipe. As judges, Nicola and I got a free taste of two beers each. Unsurprisingly, Nicola left the majority of the  beer tasting to me (she wrote “tastes ’orrible” in the comments box for all of them). Most of the contestants had opted for a lager-style beer, but one had gone for a wheat beer and another for an oatmeal stout. In the non-beer drink category there were two ginger beers, and one limoncello. In the food category that we entered, there were two chocolate-chip cookie entrants, a lemon meringue pie and a gingerbread man; and some savoury baked dishes – chicken curry vol-au-vents, pastry pies, and marmalade and cheese melba toasts.

We tasted, we drank, we judged. I attempted to sell my cake as an “Olde Family Recipe”, but admitted to anyone who asked that it was, in fact, someone else’s family. We chatted to various folk, about their products, and we talked of cabbages and kings. I seem to recall there was discussion of “dehydrated wine” at one point – handy for taking camping, on picnics etc; just add water!

Finally, the judging papers were handed in, the points totalled, and prizes awarded. I think that there was some Eurovision-style block voting going on between certain rivalrous factions and departments within the Treasury. That’s my reasoning for failing to win anything, at any rate, because clearly my cake was the bestest thing there! Nicola agrees with me so it must be true.

The Cinnamon Club

Those of you who follow my antics on h2g2 may already be aware of the cinnamon situation: that we bought a 250g bag of cinnamon quills for our housewarming party to make mulled wine, as it is actually cheaper to buy a catering pack than it is to buy one of those Schwartz-type jars containing approximately 3 cinnamon sticks. This means that we have a surfeit of cinnamon in the house, and we are seeking creative ways to use it in cooking. So far we have tackled the obvious option of moussaka, and last night I made cinnamon & lemon chicken, which, surprisingly (to me, at any rate) is an actual recipe. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Please send recipes to the usual address! At the moment we have no grinding facility, but when our stuff arrives from the UK, hopefully in the near future, I’ll be able to grind cinnamon quills for inclusion in baking etc.

That Earthquake In Full

You may have heard that there’s been “an earthquake” in Christchurch. Click on this link to find out more: http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/

Chicken

I have bought chicken from the supermarket a few times now, and on each occasion I’ve been struck by the size of the portion. Are they growing super-chickens here? The chicken breasts are large enough for one breast to make a dinner for two, and the legs are enormous! Have they been crossed with moas at some distant point in their past?

It turns out that New Zealanders are quite protective about their chickens, and all chicken bought and sold in NZ is from NZ chickens, which are free from many of the diseases which affect other parts of the world. There is a complete ban on chicken imports.

Right, I’m off to curry some chicken for dinner tonight.

Quiz Night 4

Another night, another pub quiz. This time, it was organised through Nicola’s work. We had arranged to meet at the Backbencher pub http://www.backbencher.co.nz/ which is just behind the Parliament building. I got there 5 minutes before the agreed time, to find out that the pub was closed for a private function. They were “sorry for the inconvience” (sic) and handed me some vouchers for free drinks next time…so we’ll probably be back! 

Undeterred, we returned to Nicola’s office to update the remaining players, and an alternative venue, The Shepherd’s Arms http://www.shepherds.co.nz/index.html , was quickly arranged. It was another 10 minutes’ walk away. (Everything in Wellington is close to everything else!) We got there, and various other members of the group arrived. We had decided to eat there, and I had my first dish of green-lipped mussels since I’ve been here – cooked Thai-style, with coconut cream, chilis, lime juice, coriander etc. They were very good, and I must get some myself to cook at home – they’re available fresh at both our local supermarkets.

The quiz followed what seems to be a fairly standard format here, except this time we could choose two rounds to play our joker on. We went for the French round – all the questions were about France, French, or things with France in their name; and the music round – all pop, so Nicola’s specialist knowledge didn’t come into play. Several questions throughout the quiz, and particularly on the final round (TV and cinema) required local knowledge, so it was a good job we had a few Kiwis on the team! If we’re going to set up a regular team, I think that this is going to be a requirement, ’cos we (Dr. Evil voice) need the info.

After playing our two jokers, we were at the top of the leader board, but the second-placed team played their final joker on the last round and scored a perfect 10, thus pipping us to the post for first prize. Still, we ended up a creditable second, and won a $50 “bar cheque” to be used next time…as our former landlord Steve would say “these are commercial prizes to ensure you come back next week”.

All in all, a good night, and probably the best prospect so far for a regular night out – the food was good, the beer excellent (Speight's Old Dark). As it’s also close to Nicola’s office and where some of her colleagues live, the chances of getting a regular team together also look more encouraging…we’ll have to see about that.

Astronomy...

On Saturday we took the Wellington Cable Car http://www.wellingtoncablecar.co.nz/ up to the Carter Observatory, as arranged last week at our housewarming party. The planetarium show, which lasted just under an hour, consisted of two parts: the first was about the effects of space travel on the human body, some of the challenges met by astronauts and how they train and prepare for them, including the “vomit comet” method of achieving weightlessness whilst still in the earth’s atmosphere; the second part was a live presentation by our friendly astronomer, guiding us around the Southern hemisphere’s night sky, including the conjunction of Venus, Mars and Saturn currently clearly visible here. All in all, a good show. We met up with the presenter afterwards and had a quick lunch in the café, before finding our way back home – the observatory and Botanical Gardens are right behind our flat, up a hill.

Other things we noticed: lots of tuis. 

We’re still quite excited to see these. This will probably wear off in time.

Nicola took her cello in to the music shop, to check the strings after the air freight journey. Fortunately they seem to have survived the journey, so a retune was all that was required.

...And Gastronomy

As part of our mission to fully discover New Zealand, I’ve been trying the local fish available in the supermarkets and wholesale outlet that we use. There are some familiar types of fish and some that are new to us: so far we’ve tried tarakihi, 

and groper. 

So far I’ve just had it plain grilled with a dash of lemon juice, but tonight I’m going to try it with some Asian herbs/spices on noodles, and see how that works.

Cooking With Kate

One of Nicola’s work colleagues had two tickets to a French cookery demonstration that she was unable to use, so she passed them to us. It gave us an opportunity to go to a new area of Wellington, Newtown, where most of the buildings are, predictably, old. But they must have been new once. We turned up early at the Mediterranean Food Warehouse http://www.medifoods.co.nz/, and decided to have a quick snack whilst we were waiting, as we weren’t sure what we would be getting to eat in the evening – the ticket said “wine and nibbles”.

At seven, we entered the warehouse and had a glass of wine; plates of pizza slices were passed around as well, so it looked like the snack beforehand had been unnecessary – there was plenty. The recipes to be demonstrated were duck liver pâté, bouillabaisse, and crème brûlée. The chef, Kate, cooked all of these whilst providing commentary and answering questions, all with the help of an overhead camera projection. Meanwhile, the two owners kept telling us how the products she was using were available in their store “at the bargain price of $xxx! I can’t believe we’re selling this so cheap! Our accountant will do his nut!” etc. Subtle it was not!

At the end of each course, the results (“here’s one I prepared earlier”) were passed around for tasting. So all in all, we were well fed throughout the evening. As with watching cookery shows on the tv, they generally tell you stuff you know already, but if you pick up one or two tips from it then it’s worth it, in my opinion…and I did.

So we returned “home” sated, with a definite plan to return with a car to stock up on ingredients from the warehouse, because they do seem to have a lot of good quality stuff there…I was drooling somewhat and had to be led away by Nicola!