Author: Bunny Eats Design

A nice bit of beef

Nosh sells some lovely beef and this piece was perfect for marinading to make a teriyaki beef with. The meat had a good beefy flavour which is often missing from supermarket beef. I usually buy cheap cuts of beef to stew or braise. But every now and then it’s nice to treat yourself to some more expensive beef to cook medium rare (or rarer). I like my beef to be pink and juicy and this was no exception. Marinade: Sesame oil, soy sauce, mirin, rice wine, sugar and grated ginger. Topped with a sesame seed blend and served with white rice, snow peas and mushrooms.  

EasyPeasy SpagBol

Spaghetti Bolognese is one of those easy crowd pleasers. Cheap, tasty, filling. I often cook a big batch even if it’s the two of us because it reheats wonderfully for lunches the next day. You can also make the first part in advance and refrigerate, then pop it into the oven prior to serving. I find herbs lose their potency the more you cook them, so in this dish, I add them near the end. EasyPeasy SpagBol Enough for 2 for dinner and some lunch the next day. Ingredients Half a kilo of beef mince Half a pack of dried pasta 1 tin of diced tomotoes 1 onion, diced 1 cup of grated cheese 10 mushrooms, sliced 4 cloves garlic, sliced Salt and pepper A handful of fresh herbs like sage, rosemary, oregano or thyme, chopped Preparation Preheat oven to 180°C. Add onion and mince to a frying pan. Cook until brown and then add garlic and mushrooms. When these are also cooked through, add the tin of tomatoes and stir through. Season well. Cook pasta …

Inspired by Noodle Pillows

Reading a book about Vietnamese food and travel inspired me to make this chicken noodle soup. No recipe, I just made it up as I went along, so no claims on authenticity here! Vietnamese food to me, is really fresh, simple ingredients that enhance their flavours. Vietnamese food is highly underrated here in New Zealand. Hardly anyone talks about Vietnamese cuisine. I guess because it doesn’t have the hot, bright, bold or loud cuisine of Thailand or India, or the elegant, regimented cuisine of Japan, so it gets forgotten about. Chinese cuisine is pretty big here though, so maybe it’s simply been overlooked because it’s fairly similar to Chinese cooking? Vietnamese cuisine the kind of thing I can eat very often. The food is balanced and light. There is a strong Cantonese influence as well as a French influence on Vietnamese cuisine. It’s like someone grabbed two of the world’s culinary giants and married them up. Herbs help make everything fresh tasting and you are encouraged to interact with your food, adding each ingredient to …

Green Goddess

Inspired by a green goddess salad. I didn’t have anchovies, but I did have a couple of fillets of lemon pepper crumbed fish. A perfect light meal for a warm spring Sunday lunch. Our lemon tree is giving us plenty of fruit at the moment. With the amount of fish we eat, it’s been wonderful!

Noodle Pillows by Peta Mathias

Just finished reading a great food travel book called Noodle Pillows by fellow New Zealander Peta Mathias. Published in 2003, this is an account of Peta’s journey through Vietnam as a single woman, eating everything that stood in her way. It’s always nice reading a Kiwi perspective of food from a faraway location. Full of recipes and at only 182 pages, it’s a very easy read. Some of my favourite bits: Nobody could communicate with anybody, so he took the Russians into the kitchen and pointed to things. They were delighted and wanted everything, absolutely everything. The meal went very well and a light snapped on in the entrepreneurial Vy’s brain. The very next morning she put a sign outside the Mermaid, listing what the customers had eaten the night before – this was their first menu. ‘Vietnamese don’t use menus. It’s like songs. Everyone knows all the dishes and they just ask for what they feel like that day.’ Have you ever been to a restaurant where there was no menu? Where the chef …

Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breast…Wrapped in Bacon

This is one of those dishes I made up a long time ago by putting together a whole lot of delcious ingredients and hoping for the best. I mean, bacon, chicken, mushroom, garlic, cream…how could this possibly go bad? I used to make this without bacon or capers, so you can use these or leave out. This recipe is enough for 2 servings. What I like about this dish is that you can prep for it before guests arrive, then pop it in the oven when they get to your house. Then it’s only 30 minutes until dinner and you can entertain rather than fluffing around in the kitchen. Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breast…Wrapped in Bacon Ingredients 1 large chicken breast 2 pieces of streaky bacon 2 brown mushrooms 2 cloves garlic 3 tablespoons breadcrumbs 1 tablespoon herbs 1/4 cup of cream 1 teaspoon of capers salt pepper Preparation Preheat oven to 200°C. Slice the mushrooms, finely chop the garlic and put into a bowl. Add the capers, breadcrumbs, herbs, salt, pepper and cream. The mixture …

Friday Favourites: Pan Fried Chicken with Lemon grass

Sometimes all you want is tasty meat, noodles or rice and maybe some broth. No fuss, no show, no silly prices. The Pan Fried Chicken with Lemon grass at Hansan Vietnamese restaurant comes on its own ($9), or with rice, vermicelli, rice noodle soup or egg noodle soup. For $10.50 it’s a delicious bargain. All mains at Hansan are around $10. Also try their summer rolls ($5) and spring rolls ($4.50). Come here for a healthy, quick, cheap meal. Hansan Glenfield Vietnamese Restaurant Unit E, 31 Link Drive, Glenfield, North Shore Ph: 09 4433 836 Open 7days 11am til late Hansan Newmarket Vietnamese Restaurant 55 Nuffield St, Newmarket, Auckland Ph: 09 523 3988 Hansan Panmure 525-528 Ellerslie Panmure Highway Ph: 09 570 6338 Open 7 days & Nights 11am-late

Easy Pork Chop dinner

This is the first time I’ve ever grown silverbeet, and while it’s not my favourite vegetable, it’s super easy to grow and easy to cook too. Here I served up sauteed silverbeet with some roast vegies like garlic, potato, onion and mushrooms. The porkchop was thickly coated in apple sauce, a little sugar, salt and pepper and pan fried until done. The black caramelised bits tasted like intense, savoury, applepork. Yes, applepork is a word. Well, now it is.

Mastication and food voyeurism

I went for a lovely walk this warm spring evening around Mt Eden. There are some beautiful homes in my neighbourhood, as well as some horrible looking concrete blocks. At one apartment I could see right into this lady’s street level kitchen and saw her facing me, standing at her kitchen counter, stuffing her face with food. I guess she didn’t think that I could see her or she didn’t care. A glimpse out of context is a funny thing. I wonder if it’s a once off, or if she always eats her meals like that. In our kitchen, there is a possibility a neighbour could look into our kitchen, but hopefully no one has caught me standing over my food on the kitchen bench, stuffing my face. There’s something very informal and a bit naughty about standing alone in the kitchen gorging yourself. You’re saying: this food isn’t important enough for me to sit down to enjoy it. Or maybe it’s a time issue. There is no time for me to move this show …

Broadbean shoots

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on broad beans: The top few centimetres of growth on the main stems of your broad beans need to be pinched out anyway when their flowers are just starting to wilt, to stop the plant growing any taller and help it pod up. These “pinchings” have a lovely leguminous flavour – delicious as a side veg just lightly steamed and tossed in butter, and perfect in an omelette or tart. But you can also grow bean shoots “to order”, harvesting when a few inches high. I’m growing broad beans at the moment in the filing cabinet planter that we upcycled. No actual beans as yet and I finally got round to tying them up so they stand nice and tall. So I thought, what they hell, might as well eat some pinchings. What’s good enough for Hugh is good enough for us! It’s kinda funny how the landlord leaves a bit of long grass around the planter, so that you can’t see the faces of the painted rabbits, only their ears. Brussels sprouts, cauli flower …

Magical Elixir

I was recently watching Nici Wicke’s World Kitchen, specifically the Hong Kong episode. I was born in Hong Kong and it will always have a special place in my heart. In this episode, while sipping on snake soup, Nici and her Hong Kong guide Denny, talk about soup. In Western society, soup is often eaten when we are sick. Chicken soup is consciously or subconciously considered to a magical elixir that will cure what ails you. Soup is nourishing and easy to digest. In Chinese society, a nourishing soup is served with dinner to prevent sickness. Take a magical elixir every day for good health. How cool is that? I grew up with soup as a course before dinner. Chinese soup is a savoury broth and light enough to have before every meal. Meats like pork or chicken are boiled with various dried roots, vegetables, dried fruits and even nuts. It’s an important aspect of every Chinese dinner. We were often encouraged to have a second bowl of soup after our meal too. I serve soup …

Friday Favourites 4: Western Springs Road Roll

One of my favourite sushi rolls is the Western Springs Road Roll at Taiko in Kingsland right by the train station. It is grilled teriyaki eel on cucumber avocado roll. It’s just a coincidence that we lived on Western Springs Road when we first tried this sushi dish. Taiko is one of my favourite Japanese restaurants because of its location, ambience and fantastic food at reasonable prices. Plenty of good sake and Japanese beers are available and Taiko also have wonderful banquet set meals for groups. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had the banquet but it’s been wonderful every time. Banquets are great as you just put your trust in the chefs and they bring out dish after dish of food throughout the night. They happily cater for vegetarians and pescatarians too. Best to order dishes tapas style to share or to dive into the banquet. Taiko Japanese Restaurant and Bar 460A New North Road Kingsland Auckland 1021 New Zealand Ph: (09) 815 0610 sake@taikokingsland.com http://www.taikokingsland.com Hours: Tues to Sun, 5pm to late

Kai to Pie and World on your Plate: Maori

Kai to Pie “Kai to Pie — Pie to Chai — Nosh to Posh. Whatever way you slice it, Auckland’s stories can be told through food: from the extraordinary wealth of people and cultures, to its fertile abundance of land, sun and sea, come up to the Museum for a serving of Auckland on your plate.” If you haven’t already been, check out the Kai to Pie exhibition at the Auckland Museum. There’s still 3 weeks until it ends and it’s free to all Aucklanders. 12 June – 25 October 2010 Special Exhibitions Hall Auckland Museum Free entry Here are some of my photos from the exhibition. World On Your Plate: Maori Running in conjunction with this exhibition is World On Your Plate – Saturday demonstrations of cuisine from around the world. I attended the Maori food demonstration by Charles Royal and his family in July. Charles is “a fierce advocate of sustainable local cuisine, indigenous produce”. Sadly, Maori dishes and native ingredients don’t feature in the day to day cuisine of the majority of New Zealanders. …

Freestyler – Gregg’s & Taste Magazine demo

In July, I attended a Freestyle Cooking demonstration at Auckland Fish Market’s Seafood School. The event was hosted by Gregg’s and Taste Magazine and was free for Taste Magazine subscribers. Chef Alison Robert demonstrated three yummy dishes: A Chinese canapé of of prawn & sesame toast with five spice dipping sauce A Mexican starter or lunch of black bean soup with crispy tortillas A Jamaican inspired main of chicken thighs filled with Jamaican stuffing We were served generous tasters of all three dishes with wine from Grove Mill. Alison was a pleasure to watch and listen to. Equal parts comedy and education, a fun night was had by all. We took goodie bags including a freestyle apron, some organic black beans, wholemeal tortillas, and of course, a few of Gregg’s spice blends: spicy toasted sesame seasoning, Mexican seasoning and Jamaican seasonings. There were also with plenty more edible prizes for quick thinking audience who answered freestyle questions. Sorry, no prawn toast photo as I ate my pieces before I remembered to photograph it. You’ll just have to use your imagination! …