Author: Bunny Eats Design

Happy December!

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Summer’s here. It’s really here. There’s so many things to love about summer and it seems that the weather naturally puts people in a great mood. The start of summer in Auckland is lovely – before it gets too humid. I love the late sunsets, coming home in the afternoon and enjoying a drink on the deck, summer festivals, late nights, camping, baches, local beach missions after work, weekend further afield beach adventures…It’s not quite warm enough to swim yet, but give it a couple of weeks. I have been caught off-guard by the fierce sun already. One afternoon in the sun a week ago and my shoulders are peeling. No doubt there will be many feasts over the summer with outdoor barbecues, picnics as well as Christmas parties galore. We’ve got company Christmas party to look forward tonight complete with Christmas buffet and 2 hour comedy show. I think it’s nice to get Christmas parties done early and out of the way. No doubt we will be invited to other Christmas parties and events this month. …

Sayonara Spring

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Today is officially the last day of Spring before summer hits us tomorrow. I wrote a Spring To Do List at the start of September and managed to cross off 7 out of 10 items. The aim of the list is to tend to my growing edge. Your growing edge is the part of you that is still learning, trying new things and experimenting. It’s the area of your life that you are improving and working on. It’s often too easy to keep cooking your favourite tried and true dishes and while there’s nothing wrong with that, I feel like there’s so many delicious things to eat and and so little time so I need to push forward to get anywhere. I first started writing a seasonal list this winter (mid 2011) and you can read my winter summary here. Not only can you learn new things, but the unfamiliar or things that you shrink away from can become familiar to you with practice. It’s the initial leap that is the hardest. A couple on …

Roasted Garlic

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Garlic is always unreasonably cheap and I use a lot of garlic in my cooking. Sometimes though, I do buy too many bags of garlic to use before it starts sprouting, so roast garlic is a great way to eat up garlic quickly. Roast garlic is some kind of voodoo magic where the flavour vastly differs to the raw stuff. Roast garlic is really mellow, smooth and sweet. The cloves shrink inside their pods making them easy to remove from the paper. They are squishy, so you can either dig each clove out with a butter knife or use your fingers to squeeze them from of their papers. Or as I do, squeeze them out and pop them into my mouth. To use, mash with a fork, or crush with a knife to make a roasted garlic paste. If you are smearing into toast, you can just spread a whole roasted clove as you would a pat of butter. This recipe makes 4 bulbs of roast garlic but you can easily do more or less, just …

The Stars of Instant Noodles

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Let me get this out first. I am a rice girl. When given the choice, I will always pick rice over noodles. But while I love rice, I’m a rice addict rather than a connoisseur. With instant noodles, I’m a connoisseur. Instant noodles must be one of the world’s most accessible foods. A true “just add water” food and popular the world over. According to Wiki, “As of 2010, approximately 95 billion servings of instant noodles are eaten worldwide every year.”  That is an average of at least one serving a month for every person on earth. Impressive. Snack or meal? I’ve eaten noodles for breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and as a midnight snack. Not all in one day mind you! Noodles are eaten at any time of day all over Asia and while breakfast noodles may seem odd to some people, served in a mild broth, it can be the perfect way to start a day. The first meal I ate when we arrived in Vietnam on a wintery January morning was an eel noodle soup. It was a was …

Bacon Burger Summer Rolls

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Foodie purists look away now. I love bacon. I looove hamburgers. I loooooove summer rolls. I’ve learned a few things since I posted  The secret To Making Vietnamese Spring Rolls. It’s surprising that what some have known pretty much all their life, second nature that is so simple that it’s just a given, can be foreign to others. So a big thanks to all the summer roll pros for the feedback. Now I have learned that drying on a teatowel isn’t required at all for the rice paper and if you just roll it up went it is pliable, it will continue to soften to perfection. Here in New Zealand, it’s not uncommon to put random ingredients into an exotic dish to make some oddball fusion monster. Think green curry chicken sushi and butter chicken pizzas. Maybe it’s the same in other countries too. I’m totally into it. If it tastes good, I’ll eat it. So, with a bit of streaky bacon and ground beef in the fridge, I decided to use them to make summer rolls. …

Mamak

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We spent last Christmas and New Years in Malaysia (Borneo) and I’ll never forget the food we ate there. I can’t believe almost a year had gone by already. One fond memory of indulgence was our first day in KK. Upon seeing the tiny prices on the menu, we assumed the dishes were starter sized, so we ordered 2 dishes each. They were main sized. Generous. We ate till our eyes glazed over. I’d been reading about a new place called Mamak from various local Malaysian food bloggers. The word mamak refers to Malaysia’s Tamil-Muslim who run food stalls serving tasty snacks at all hours. Mamak Malaysian is a fairly new addition to the Chancery in Auckland city and it’s been operating under the radar (or at least my radar) for most of 2011. The first time I visited, there were lots of Malaysian people dining and this is surely a mark of authenticity. The Chancery has always been had a European feel about it and with posh retail on all sides, al fresco dining …

60 Beef Dumplings

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I love dumplings but you never really get enough when you order them at a restaurant. I learned how to make dumplings from my Dad when I was in my first year of uni, working at our family business. I didn’t really have any interest in cooking back then, but dumplings I could do. This time, I wrapped 60 beef dumplings. We ate 45 of them in 1 sitting. There were 2 of us. How many dumplings can you eat? I use chiffonade (ribbon cut) Chinese (napa) cabbage, grated carrot, sesame oil and soy sauce and a whole pack of store bought dumpling wrappers. You can see a recipe for a pork and onion variation of these dumplings here. This post has been submitted as part of Black and White Wednesday, a culinary photo event hosted by The Well-Seasoned Cook. More info here.

Crunchy Roast Potatoes

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I had these with pan-fried flounder, but these potatoes are great with just about anything. Very easy. I  give these potatoes a little once over with the peeler if they are developing eyes. Keep your eyes peeled! But you can fully peel them if you prefer. Crunchy Roast Potatoes Ingredients 4 medium potatoes 2 tablespoons cooking oil (I used avocado oil, but use whatever is available) 3 cloves garlic, chopped 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika 3 tablespoons breadcrumbs Salt and pepper  Preparation Pre-heat oven to 200°C. Cut potatoes into thick 2 cm slices and then cut again so you get small cubes. Transfer potatoes to a shallow roasting dish. Add oil, garlic, paprika and breadcrumbs. Salt and pepper generously. Mix well. Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden.

Buttery Golden Pan-Fried Flounder

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When I was a little girl, a single steamed flounder, a plate of vegetables and plenty of rice would feed our family. My parents would allocate me and my sister a flounder roe each. Since flounder come with two roes by default, it was lucky they stopped at two kids. The roe was a treat!  The roe itself isn’t a thing of beauty, but I loved biting into it and imagining I was eating thousands of tiny fish at once. If you’re wondering what flounder roe tastes like, I find it mild and slightly creamy with a only hint of fishiness. The fish eggs are tiny – much smaller than other fish roe. Salmon is my number one fish, but if I must pick a white fish, it’s got to be flounder. I adore flounder but I usually steam or baked it. Flounder has a sweet flavour and a delicate texture. When cooked, it flakes with a little pressure and the large bones make it easy to eat whole. As a kid, my parents never shied away …

Lemonade

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A friend brought over a bag of real lemons. Real lemons are large, a deep yellow colour, with bumpy, thick skins. They smell super lemony – nothing like the anemic fake-looking lemons you get from supermarkets these days (what are they?!). Supermarket lemons make me frown. I was thirsty for something sweet and tart, so I made lemonade. I used a little of the J.Friend and Co honey that I received from a goodie bag for covering Out Standing In Their Fields a few weeks ago. The one I got is Vipers Bugloss. Don’t know what the heck that means? Me neither. Luckily, their website fills in all the gaps (it’s an alpine wild flower). It’s pretty awesome. You even get to know who the beekeepers are (Lucy and AJ), the vintage (2009) and where it is made (Clarence Valley, Muzzle Station). I’ve never needed to know that much about my honey, but it’s a nice touch. Especially in an age were ingredients come from all over the place. The first glass no doubt will …

Birthday Ham

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Party in the backyard I took the day off work for my birthday and The Koala came home a little early to help set up for my party. Our new outdoor table is getting plenty of use and the $20 I paid for it was a true bargain. I cleaned up a junk corner of our house last weekend and uncovered some parasols that we used for our wedding over 2 years ago. They’re so pretty that we had to do something with them. The Koala decorated a tree with them and I am stoked with how they turned out. Ham Ham on the bone is one of my favourite porky products and I look forward to Christmas ham every year. But ham once a year isn’t enough! For my birthday, my sister gifted me a Hellers Free Farmed half ham on the bone. From the Hellers website: Hellers Free Farmed products are sourced from selected New Zealand farms. The Sows are outdoors and once weaned, the piglets are raised in barns with no crates or …

Eleven Eleven Eleven. Stolen Hakanoa

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Everyone should invent a cocktail on their birthday. What a way to start the day right? Yesterday morning, the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the century, I celebrated my birthday with a cocktail at 11 minutes past 11. For my birthday, The Koala bought me a bottle of Stolen Rum in gold. I first had this rum at Taste at the Cloud in a cocktail called Stolen Summer. It was delicious. Stolen Summer is STOLEN white rum infused with Manuka wood smoked Apricot, Peach and Nectarine, fresh lime and ginger beer. I’m still experimenting with Hakanoa Ginger Syrup at the moment so I thought why not pair them together? Stolen Eleven Eleven 1 shot Stolen Rum (or any smooth golden rum) 1/2 shot Hakanoa Ginger Syrup A squeeze of lemon A lemon wedge A sprig of mint Ice Add the rum, ginger syrup into a glass of your choice. Top with a squeeze of lemon juice and ice, a sprig of mint and lemon wedge. Sip in the sun.