Tofu Tuesday: Doppelgänger
Tofu has more than one doppelgänger. Can you tell them apart?
Author: Bunny Eats Design
Monday Bunday: Mitsy/ArtMind’s Bunnies
Mitsy is the genius behind clay based store ArtMind on Etsy. She works with many different shapes including bunny shapes. These sweet pieces are highly collectable and offer a serene, contemplative body that would feel right at home in a mini zen garden. You can tell front from back only by the tell-tale tail. View more of her works at her Etsy shop here: www.etsy.com/shop/ArtMind
Spring Time Fun Time
This Spring, my to do list focuses more sorting, new beginnings and the garden with just a few new culinary adventures. Declutter the kitchen Build a compost Plant herbs Get a cast iron frypan Make pesto from scratch Live on $2.25NZ per day for 5 days for charity Make hollandaise sauce Bake something from scratch Make Pâté Make cheese What do you hope to do this Spring?…or Autumn for my northern hemisphere friends.
Winter Can Kiss My Ass
It’s the last day of winter! Woohoo! Spring officially starts tomorrow here in Auckland and I am super glad to see the end of the cold weather. The start of winter saw The Koala and I return home from our adventure in Thailand and Laos. I got really sick when we arrived home and didn’t come right for about 2 months. So for the first chunk of winter, I barely touched my to do list. It was only in August, the final month of winter that I’ve really felt up to tackling this mini bucket list. It was a mad rush to the finish line and in the end I only failed one entry. Not bad. Here’s a reflection on the list this month. 1. Make Spaghetti alla Puttanesca I always wanted to try this and this winter, I first tasted Spaghetti alla Puttanesca in Pai, Thailand. This may seem strange, but this tiny town in Thailand has surprisingly good food. Since we’ve been back, I’ve made this dish at home several times. I adore anchovies so …
Make Biryani
Lamb biryani is my regular order when we get Indian food delivered. I was introduced to it a few years ago when an Indian co-worker brought in a huge pot of biryani for his birthday lunch. Even after almost crying due to a whole green chili I mistook for capsicum, I fell in love with the dish. The one bowl wonder is comforting, the mild blend of spices, the slow cooked, super tender meat very appealing. Sadly, not many restaurants offer this dish. I guess it’s because it’s considered peasant food, not restaurant food. It’s time consuming to make and probably not all that popular here in New Zealand. It’s the last week of winter so I’m trying to cross off my winter to do list and last week’s CSA box included both carrots and cauliflower. I decided to attempt a lamb biryani. I roughly followed the recipe from Cuisine Magazine which can be found online here. While the recipe generously suggests this will serve 4, I think it’s more like serves 6 to 8. Even with …
OOOOBY Box 8
Yesterday I came home to not one but two boxes from OOOOBY. I guess our three add ons this week meant that 1 box wasn’t quite enough for everything. Good thing I returned 3 boxes today. To send your delivery boxes back, all you have to do is leave your empty boxes out. When your box is delivered, they will take back any empty boxes to be reused. I have a bunch of fruit and one kumara left over from last week. Our lemon tree is in full fruit and I made a yummy lemonade over the weekend. Might have to make another batch this week. This week our CSA box included: Vegetable 1 Broccoli 20 Mushrooms A huge bunch of Spinach 4 Spring Onion A bunch of Coriander Fruit 5 Pink Lady Apples 9 Green Kiwifruit 2 Grapefruit Add Ons All Good Bananas Apple Juice 2L Wild Wheat Ciabatta The most interesting thing in the box: Grapefruit. The Koala isn’t keen. What am I going to do with it? Welcome to ideas! Coriander. I …
Tofu Tuesday: Apples and butterscotch
We have an abundance of apples at the moment and with butterscotch still on my to do list this winter, I decided to make apple hand pies with the ridiculously easy butterscotch sauce as featured on Smitten Kitten. It really was easy. My apple handpies are easy too: Preheat oven to 180°C. Take 1 sheet of frozen puff pastry, thaw and cut in half into 2 rectangles. Peel 1 apple (reserving peel for a lucky bunny) and slice apple into even pieces and arrange on 1 half of each piece of pastry. Sprinkle with half a teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon. Fold rectangles over in half and crimp edges with a fork. Poke 2 sets of fork holes in the top of the pies to allow steam out. Brush with milk and bake for 30 minutes until golden brown. Remove from oven, cut diagonally into triangles, arrange on a plate and drizzle with butterscotch sauce. This post is an entry for Sweet New Zealand, a monthly blogging event open to all Kiwi bloggers. Founded …
Monday Bunday: Action Bunny
Action Bunny wears gold pants. Action Bunny also dones a gold ninja outfit and sports a wooden peg leg. Is that Action Piggie too? Sadly, Action Bunny is no longer available at his shop over on Etsy shop Corduroy. But maybe one day he will be back. Corduroy is run by a Jen Ray and her website is jenray.net/
Go to a Korean BBQ
It was a cold, wet and wintery night, part way through Auckland Restaurant Month. My parents, The Koala and I were in for a nice Korean meal at Faro on Lorne Street in Auckland City. First impressions: the restaurant is beautifully fitted out. There are a several dining areas and we were seated at the back in what we called a dining pit. The sunken tables hover just above be near the wooden floor, but our legs disappeared into a recess under the table. Getting up can be difficult, but made for a cozy meal. The staff were friendly and when we walked through the restaurant to our table at the back, we were greeted by many of their staff. Nice touch. The atmosphere is great here and they play modern dance music, it’s upbeat but not loud. When dining with my family we usually share dishes. We ordered two set meals and two barbecue meals and it was the perfect amount of food. The set meals are great if you want authentic Korean cuisine without having to cook …
Tame An Ugly Root
I always wondered what to do with the horrid looking vegetable known as celeriac. I remember seeing them at farmers markets before but never eaten it or tried to cook with it because it was so ugly. I put it on my winter to do list without thinking too hard about where I was going to get it from. As I was getting nearer to the end of winter and still no celeriac in sight, I put out a public plea to see if anyone knew where I could get my hands on one. Natz from my local Nosh came to the rescue celeriac was not only available, but on special that week. How’s that for luck? The celeriac at Nosh were already trimmed and nowhere near the freaky the specimens I’d seen before. From the top, you could almost call it pretty. Since we were having a roast, I decided to mash it since it sounded safe and easy. I carefully sliced off the skin and chopped it up, boiled it and The Koala …
Roast Pork With Crackling
Ah pork crackling. Crunchy and salty with a layer of slightly gooey richness just below the surface. It’s that still chewy layer that gets me. Crackling shouldn’t ben bone dry and crunchy all the way through. Unctuous and flavoursome, that layer of fat before the meat is glorious. My parents opened a roast dinner shop in Bayswater when I was in high school and I was always spoilt with roast meat sandwiches. We had roast chicken, roast lamb, roast beef and the king of roasts, roast pork with crackling. I didn’t take it for granted if that’s what you’re thinking. After all these years, roast pork is still my number one choice when we get roast dinner takeaways. I’m ashamed to admit I never tried to roast a pork with crackling. Until now. I searched far and wide for the crackling recipes known to man. And then of course, I took the best recipes and I took a few shortcuts. The recipe below is based mostly on the hands down, best recipe you can find …
OOOOBY Box 7 and an Asian influenced menu
Last week’s cafe menu with burgers, pasta, french toast, burritos, fish and chips and pizza exploded in The Koala’s comfort zone, but I prefer to eat more asian influenced meals. This week we received bok choy and lime which will be great for an asian inspired menu. As a good Chinese girl, even living in New Zealand, I grew up eating rice once, even twice a day. This week our CSA box included: Vegetables 3 Red Kumara (Certified Organic) 1 Baby Cos (Self Certified Organic) 2 Bok Choy (Self Certified Organic) 1 Cauliflower (Conventional Sprays) 4 Carrots (Conventional Sprays) Fruit 9 Gold Kiwifruit (Certified Organic) 2 Limes (Self Certified Organic) 3 Navel Oranges (Self Certified Organic) 2 Apples Newstead Gold (Conventional Sprays) Add Ons 1 loaf Wild Wheat Ciabatta 2 litres pure Apple juice The most interesting thing in the box: Bok choy and limes. Menu 7 Asian style chicken broth with carrots*, onion, ginger and rice Korean BBQ Beef (Bulgogi) with baby cos*, korean noodle salad (japchae), kimchi and rice Wonton soup (pork mince, chives and scallops) with bok choy* Honey lime* chicken and cauliflower with toasted …
Tofu Tuesday: Tofu and his digger…again
Tofu has a digger. He claimed it after our gardener found it and a truck in our bushes and pulled it out of hiding. They live under the stairs now and Tofu hangs out with them most days. I like how this photo captures the digger and Tofu in mirroring curves.
Monday Bunday: Lunch boxes
I’m bringing lunch to work more these days. Sandwiches at the start of the week (with roast meat left over from Sunday), leftovers and a hodgepodge of assembled lunches on other days. If I was busy at work, I would treat myself to a nice lunch out. It was an excuse to get out of the office, see some daylight, go for a walk and sample some delicious local cuisine. If I buy lunch, I usually spend an average of $7NZ which soon adds up. I used to buy lunch most days, but Last week I brought a home made lunch every single day and the last few weeks before, I’ve been buying only once a week. I’m always recycling plastic take-out containers, but if I had an adorable lunch box I would be more enthusiastic about bringing lunch. Here is a round up of a few bunny lunch boxes from around the web. I particularly like the ones wit partitions and multi-storey compartments. Links starting from top: Rectangle black and red, Rectangle purple Box …
Chocolate Fondue
Part 3 of 3 Unlike cheese fondue, chocolate fondue is a fairly new invention, credited to a Swiss restaurateur Konrad Egli who invented the dish in 1964. To finish off our fondue night last week, we had a chocolate fondue. Unlike cheese fondue, chocolate fondue can be cooked in the fondue pot as it chocolate turns liquid at a much lower temperature than cheese. I cut up some fruit (from our CSA box) and my sister, Joey and her boyfriend, D brought marshmallows and mini cinnamon donuts. These were great skewered and dipped into the melted chocolate. While waiting for the chocolate to melt, we pretended to toast them in front of the crackling fireplace video. The fruit also went down well and was a burst of freshness to cut through the heavier stuff. Chocolate Fondue Tips Joey, our resident baker and chocolate scientist, recommended that we didn’t add cream to the chocolate fondue in case it made the mixture seize up. Seized chocolate is when your smooth, silken chocolate transforms into a grainy, hard …
Cheese Fondue
Part 2 of 3 One of my winter bucket list tasks was to have a fondue party. Fondue is so retro that it might be cool again. Perhaps once a peasant food, or perhaps not, fondue has been enjoyed by Europeans for hundreds of years. Cold weather and melty cheese go well together and make for a fun night in. I have a love for interactive eating. It’s like entertainment and food rolled into one. Bread is the traditional thing to dip into cheese fondue and we had ciabatta which is a white, porous, Italian bread. We also had blanched broccoli and carrot, tortellini and popcorn chicken. There were also a few nibbles that didn’t require dipping: salami, a can of stuffed green olives, a jar of pitted black olives and a small bowl of pickles. These were great for grazing on while waiting for the fondue to cook. During our cheese fondue, the first dishes to get eaten up were the salami and popcorn chicken. I guess we love meat and cheese. Coco also …
It’s Fon-DO, not Fon-DON’T
Part 1 of 3 A cold winter night after a clear winter day. Gaudy knitted jumpers. A crackling open fireplace before an inviting wool rug. The smell of wine and cheese. One warm room and a few close friends. This is how I imagine a traditional fondue party and the inspiration for our fondue party last week. I’m not sure exactly when fondue parties fell out of fashion, sometime in the early 90s? I’ve never had fondue before but melted cheese as the basis of a meal? Hell yeah! The Koala and I rearranged our lounge, downloaded a crackling fireplace video for the TV, put tunes on shuffle, cut up and arranged food in little bowls and waited for our guests to arrive. Coco was the only one in the group that had eaten a fondue before. She had it in Switzerland so I made her my fondue expert (even if her experience was over 10 years ago). For some reason I always thought that the cheese was melted in the fondue pot. But after …
Challenge Accepted
I know that a food blog is probably one of the most self indulgent, irrelevant things I could occupy my time with. Especially with a third of the world under-fed and another third starving. We are the lucky third that are fed. So, I have signed up with hundreds of other kiwis to participate in the Live Below The Line Challenge next month. As a food blogger, I would like to give back by taking part in this campaign and I’ll take every grain of support offered. Currently seeking cheerleading, donations, kind words, advice and encouragement. The challenge takes place over 5 days from Monday 24th September to Friday 28th September allocating just $2.25NZ ($1.80US) per day for food and drink. I would love for you to join me in the challenge or to sponsor me by making a donation. I have pledged a target of $500NZ. Where is the money going? I have nominated for all donations to go to the World Vision and World Food Programme (WFP) partnership. WFP to delivers life-saving food aid to families facing extreme hunger …
Live Below The Line – An Intro
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. – Edmund Burke Live Below The Line is relatively new campaign, not to make you feel guilty about world hunger and poverty, but to raise awareness and funds to charities that have been steadily working hard on these issues for years. Before we can tackle the concept of poverty. We need to understand it. This is a great 2 minute video about the challenge by Auckland designer Kaan Hiini. The challenge: Spend 5 days feeding yourself with $2.25 a day – the New Zealand equivalent of the extreme poverty line. The reason: To give a glimpse into the lives of 1.4 billion people who have no choice but to live below the line every day – and who have to make $2.25NZ ($1.80US) cover a lot more than food. More information can be found on the Live Below The Line website: http://www.livebelowtheline.com/nz
OOOOBY Box Week 6. Cafe Menu
Cafes can be found all over New Zealand and they all serve similar menus with their own twist. New Zealand cafe culture is HUGE. We take our coffee espresso very seriously and while restaurants are reserved for special occasions, people go to cafes for no real reason but to eat. The casual, informal style of dining appeals to our kiwi mentality. This week, cooking at home with our CSA box, we’re having grilled haloumi, french toast, salad, burgers, quesadillas a pasta dish, a soup and even a smoothie. Very much inspired by a stock standard cafe board. This week our CSA box included: Vegetable Garlic (Self Certified Organic) Pumpkin (Certified Organic) Avocado (Certified Organic) Fancy Lettuce (Self Certified Organic) Fennel (Certified Organic) Broccoli (Conventional Sprays) Fruit Pink Lady Apples (Conventional Sprays) Green Kiwifruit (Certified Organic) Mandarins (Conventional Sprays) Add Ons 1 loaf Wild Wheat Ciabatta 2 litres pure Apple juice All Good Fair Trade Bananas The most interesting thing in the box: Fennel. I’ve cooked it a couple times and while I don’t usually like aniseed, I do like fennel. I like the idea of …
Bunny Eats Design 