Recyclable packaging for French Rabbit Wine. Found at TheDieline.com French Rabbit Wine had an art competition using their packaging only. More info here: http://www.frenchrabbit.com/french-rabbit-art-contest-gallery.html This was one of the entres: Artwork: The Rabbit With A Green Heart by Zachary Roberts, Michael Feeney and David Sekoll from Academy of Art University, San Francisco, USA.
I’ve seen butterflied chickens for sale at the market, but never bought one. I love stuffing so if we have a whole chicken, it usually gets stuffed. I’ve recently had my knife sharpened, so I decided that I’d butterfly a chicken myself. Butterfly is such a lovely word. To be butterflied, is not so lovely. Hopefully you will find this recipe lovely. One of the benefits of butterflying a chicken is that you can marinade both sides. Inside and out! Ideally, you would marinade this for a few hours but I wanted to eat asap so this recipe should take less than 1 hour from start to finish. Change it up if you have time to marinade. Use whatever root vegetables you like. This time, I used red skinned potatoes, red onion and parsnip. A Recipe for a Demented Butterfly Ingredients 1 smallish chicken An assortment of root vegetables and a few cloves of garlic A fresh salad Marinade 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped Zest of 2 lemons Juice of 2 lemons 1/2 teaspoon ground …
Maybe you have a ton of onion weed in your backyard like we do. It’s chive smell can be experienced every time we or a neighbour mows the lawn. Onion weed is actually quite pretty with it’s fairyland looking flowers. It’s hard to imagine that it is so offensive to some people (being a noxious weed and all). If you are unsure, don’t eat it. Otherwise, happy foraging! Tofu the bunny doesn’t pay onion weed any attention. Since our neighbour mentioned they eat onion weed in dumplings, I’ve been dying to try it out. So here’s a recipe I fudged together. Enjoy! Onion Weed Dumplings Makes about 50 dumplings Ingredients 500 grams (1 pound) pork mince 10 leaves onion weed 7 onion weed flower tops (about 5 flowers each) 12 dried shitaake mushrooms 1 tablespoon black vinegar Salt 2 tablespoons soy sauce 1 teaspoon chili seasoning 1 teaspoon minced ginger 1 teaspoon sesame oil 1 cup of water 1 packet of dumpling wrappers Preparation Soak the mushrooms in 1 cup of hot water for a 5 minutes. …
SBF Brasserie has the very best seafood buffet in Auckland and reserved for special occasions in my family. Fresh oysters, salmon sashimi, crab and hot smoked salmon are my personal highlights and I’ll happily have 2 helpings of seafood. Crab isn’t popular in New Zealand for some reason – perhaps the high grapple factor puts people off – so it’s nice to see it offered here. The hot food selection is good too but I didn’t need more than 1 plate of it. Service is great, water top ups a plenty and plates are cleared regularly. The golden kiwi and pavlova flavoured icecream was interesting and yummy. The chocolate fountain is a fun (though messy) for adults and kids. My only complaint are the booths. I’m not a large person and found it hard to get in and out of the booth seats. Not much space between seat and table. The cushions while pretty only get in the way and with people on on either me, it was a hassle to get out as I had …
Win this painting! Cotton Wool Tree by Joanne Ho. (click on image for a larger view) Kindly commissioned and donated for you and I. Joanne is my one and only little sister and she is a wonderfully talented artist and baker. You can read more of her antics, art and baking over here at her blog. This wonderful painting is part the 1000 hits celebratory prize pack. I have to say, I’m already jealous of the winner of this adorable bunny painting. Only 10 more days until I draw the winner so get your entries in! It’s got to be one of the easiest competitions to enter. All you have to do is comment on any post on this blog and you are in the draw. More details here.
Onion weed grows everywhere in New Zealand and is considered a noxious weed. Why it hasn’t become a national ingredient is beyond me. We have a lot of onion weed in our backyard and I found out a little while ago that it was edible, but I hadn’t decided how to use it in my cooking. Our neighbour came around to our house last week – he and his baby daughter like to visit Tofu in the garden every now and then. My neighbour’s wife is Mongolian and he mentioned that Mongolians eat onion weed. His wife uses the leaves and flowers in dumplings. I often use spring onion or chives in pork dumplings, so onion weed would be an easy substitute. My first attempt to cook with onion weed was nothing fancy, just some scrambled eggs. My bouquet of onion weed, sage and coriander just before I chopped it up and added it to my scrambled eggs. Onion weed scrambled eggs with an onion weed flower as a garnish. The flowers have a much milder …
I felt like eating stuffing, but didn’t feel like roasting a whole chicken on evening, so I dreamed up this instead. I made a stuffing mixture using breadcrumbs, salt & pepper, fresh sage from the garden, oil and garlic. Using my fingers, I loosened the skin of 2 chicken legs and pushed a layer of stuffing into the space between the skin and meat. I replaced the skin and brushed the chicken skin with a bit of oil, salt and peppered generously and baked in a hot oven 200°C for 30 minutes. Turned down the oven to 170°C and baked for another 30 minutes. The result is crispy skin chicken with stuffing soaking up lots of the chicken juices. Reserve the cooking liquid to mash with kumara or potatoes. Roast chicken flavoured mash. Yum!!!
I just read an article by Anna Hart called The Last Fish Supper. If you eat seafood in New Zealand, you should probably read it. You can read it here. Here are some insightful parts: …Some of the hoki caught off the coast of New Zealand is sent to China to be processed, before being imported back into the country… In New Zealand, Hoki is really popular as a cheap, everyday fish. It’s nuts to think that we’re sacrificing freshness for cheap labour. What can we do about this? I’ve heard of produce that are sent elsewhere to be processed and packaged and then distributed nation or world wide. This includes being sent back to the area it was grown/harvested at in the first place. What’s the point in buying locally when there’s a huge carbon footprint? …most restaurants in Waiheke have to source their fish from Auckland, as only one local fisherman has a quota entitling him to sell fish from an island renowned for abundant snapper, kingfish and trevally… This is ridiculous. Why aren’t …
To celebrate 1000 hits at Bunny.Eats.Design. I’m going to give away a Bunny.Eats.Design. prize pack of blog themed goodies to 1 lucky reader. I can’t even tell you how much this prize pack is worth because half this stuff isn’t even for sale. All you have to do is make a comment on any post between now and the 31st of October to be in the draw. I will randomly draw and announce the winner on 1st November and will contact the winner via email for their postal details. The winner will receive: 1 x painting by artist Joanne Ho 5 x Bunny Suicide postcards by Andy Riley Bunny and bear egg molds (pictured) 12 x bunny greeting cards with envelopes (5 designs pictured) 1 x A3 food type print (pictured) 6 x Aminal stickers (3 designs pictured) (the last 3 prizes on the list are my own designs)
Eggshell seed starters. Cleaned and ready for action. Filled with soil and basil seeds. Now we wait 🙂 I have more basil seeds and more eggshells that I might plant in a couple of weeks.
Does this make my bum look big?
Well, yes.
Promotional packaging for San Francisco’s Carrots Boutique by advertising firm, Pereira & O’Dell. Found at TheDieline.com
So you might already know that my favourite fish is salmon. I adore white fish too, but white fish is white fish to me. Whether it’s $40 snapper, or $25 Tarakihi, or $10 Moki. I don’t have a preference, I’ll eat them all. Maybe this horrifies you. Maybe it doesn’t. What it does mean though, is that I will never pay $40 for snapper when a $10 Moki will do the job swimmingly. Herb Encrusted Moki burgers Serves 2 hungry punters for a big lunch or normal dinner Ingredients 1 fillet firm white fish. About 10cm x 20cm size. About 400-500 grams (up to 1 pound) Half a cup breadcrumbs 2 tablespoons dried herbs 1/2 teaspoon salt Generous grind of black pepper Knob of butter, melted A handful of salad greens 2 slices of tomato Fresh buns Mayonnaise Preparation On a plate, mix breadcrumbs, herbs, salt and pepper. Cut the fillet into 2 square pieces. Brush melted butter onto fish and push onto breadcrumb mixture so that all sides are thickly coated. Heat a non-stick …
The doorbell rang loudly this morning and I was greeted by a little crowd of children. One of them waved a paper packet at me and asked if I’d like to buy some carrots. Carrots? In a paper packet? What is wrong with kids these days? It was a fundraising exercise for their school and instead of flogging chocolate bars, they were selling packets of seeds. I sat down and flicked through their box of goodies. There was a good range of vegetables, herbs and flowers. I bought these 3 packets at $3 a packet. All edibles of course 🙂 Schools encourage mass chocolate bar consumption when they ask students to flog boxes and boxes of chocolate to their friends and family. This is a more conscientious, “save the planet” way to raise funds. Well done McGregor’s! Good luck little ones! I hope you reach your $60 target! Here’s a couple of photos of what my garden is up to at the moment. Brussel sprouts Broadbeans (Fava)
A weekend brunch in Auckland is something of an institution. Aucklanders flock to their favourite cafes in the weekends to eat familiar dishes they can easily prepare at home. Big breakfasts, eggs benedict, creamy mushrooms on toast…all delicious and all can prepared at home for a fraction of the price. Dining out for brunch is a treat. Sometimes you just want to be waited on first thing in the morning. Sometimes you need someone else to do it all when you’re hungover or just want to relax on your day off. People eat brunch and breakfast all over the world, so why are there no restaurants and cafes that specialise in food from other countries? Okra, one of my favourite local brunch spots used to offer Bus-Stop Eggs (served in the pan). This was a dish of spiced lamb koftas and capsicum in a tomato sauce, baked with eggs ($15.50). Fairly exotic. Unfortunately, they took that off the menu, but they’ve replaced it with what they call Spanish Breakfast which is pretty similar, still served …
Best nachos I’ve ever had. It’s not your standard mince concoction, but pieces of slow cooked beef in a savoury sauce. The process disentegrates the beef into small melt-in-the-mouth pieces and that tasty, tasty sauce. Comes standard with all the trimmings – guac, salsa, sour cream and even pesto. Some places charge extra for those bits, but not here. I couldn’t finish my portion unfortunately. I desparately wanted to and I feel like I’ve failed. I hope the chef wasn’t offended by my leftovers. I can’t vouch for authenticity since I’ve never eaten in Mexico, but I can vouch for the fact that this food is freakin delicious. Other Mexican places I’ve been to pale in comparison. El Camino is small and popular so it is a good idea to book to avoid disappointment. They play good music here (well, the stuff I listen to at home) but it might be a touch loud for some people…say if you didn’t like that kind of music. Price for nachos was reasonable at $12.50 and is one of …
I find it hard to pass up 5kg of potatoes for $5. 10kg for $10 is a common occurrence but who can eat 10kg of potatoes before they go funky? I don’t have an army to feed, so 5kg is more reasonable. Loose pototoes go for $2-3 per kilo. So even if you give away half of your 5kg bag, you are still better off. Now, what to do with all these pototoes? We’ve got lemons, sage and rosemary in the garden at the moment, so lemon, sage and rosemary wedges was calling out to be made. Lemon, Sage and Rosemary Wedges A spring time lunch for two. Ingredients 4 medium potatoes 1 tablespoon flour Zest of 1 lemon 1 tablespoon fresh chopped sage and rosemary 2 tablespoons oil Salt Pepper Sour Cream Cheese Preparation Preheat oven to 200°C. Cut potatoes into half and then into wedges. Place in a plastic bag and add flour, lemon zest, oil, salt and pepper. Shake well. Arrange potatoes onto a lightly oiled oven proof dish. Stand every piece …
I always write down my recipes after I’ve cooked them. It’s just the way I work. I guess I like freestyling more than I like following recipes. This time around, it was a little different. I had some time on my hands so I typed up this recipe based on ingredients I knew we had, and then followed the recipe. I have made only 1 alteration to this recipe after cooking it. The leek soaked up a lot of stock so next time I would use 2 cups instead of 1 so there can be more of this lovely sauce. After tasting this, you too will believe this is the only way to eat leeks. My husband has decided he loves leeks too after eating this. Creamy Braised Leeks with Broadbean and Chorizo Ingredients 1 leek A knob of butter A splash of white wine or cooking wine 1 cup chicken stock 2 cups chicken stock 4 chorizo sausages (or other spicy sausage) 2 handfuls of broadbeans A splash of cream A sprinkling of herbs, salt, …
I hate recipes that ask of odd measurements. Is that OCD? You won’t see me using three quarters of a can of tomatoes. I’m going to use the whole can, or half a can and save the other half for a second dish. You’ll see that most of my recipes ask for 1 cup, half a cup, 1 can, half a can, 1 packet, half a packet etc. It just makes sense to me. It can be a real pain the arse though. I have a thing about splitting eggs. I know, you can save your bowl of egg yolks or whites for another dish. But I can’t count the number of times that a bowl of egg yolks has sat in my fridge until it is time to throw it out. So now I just avoid making recipes that call for split eggs. Or if it’s possible, I throw in whole eggs. Naughty, I know. What do you do? Do you throw in full measures of things? Or do you stick to recipes? p.s. …
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