All posts filed under: Culinary Adventures

Winter Can Kiss My Ass

Published by

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

Published by

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

Published by

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 …

Go to a Korean BBQ

Published by

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 …

Roast Pork With Crackling

Published by

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

Published by

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 …

Chocolate Fondue

Published by

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

Published by

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

Published by

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 …

Live Below The Line – An Intro

Published by

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

Published by

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 …

Apocalypse Spaghetti is for Sluts

Published by

The Koala’s fascination with conspiracies and the end of the world coupled with my love of survival tips and post apocalypse fashion mean that post apocalyptic movies and TV programmes are held in high regard around here. I don’t truly believe that shit is going to hit the fan in our lifetime. But I guess the old adage, “Prepare for the worst, hope for the best” works in this situation. Before shopping day, or before OOOOBY box Tuesday, when I’m scraping together what little fresh food we have to make a meal or even using pantry only or freezer only ingredients, I always think to myself, “I hope society doesn’t crumble tomorrow, I’m not prepared today”. I hope that when it all comes crashing down, we will have a full fridge and pantry. Being city dwellers, there will be little fresh food at the end of days and while looting will be a popular past time, so will eating food from cans. Being able to conjure a few meals from pantry only ingredients is a …

OOOOBY Box Week 5

Published by

We are now in week 5 of our weekly CSA deliveries from local company OOOOBY. All three of us look forward to OOOOBY Tuesdays and the cute name probably doesn’t hurt. This week included lemons and potatoes which are on our “do not want” list so we didn’t receive them. We don’t want potatoes and lemons not because we don’t like them, but because we do. Rather than praying for potatoes each week, we buy them in bulk so that there is always a sack to be used. Our lemon tree is giving us delicious, juicy lemons this winter so no need to have those delivered either. This week our CSA box included: Vegetable 8 Mushrooms (Conventional Sprays) 1 giant bunch of Spinach (Self Certified Organic) 6 Carrots (Conventional Sprays) 1/2 a head of Cauliflower (Conventional Sprays) 1 Broccoli Fruit 7 Newstead Gold Apples (Conventional Sprays) 11 Gold Kiwifruit (Certified Organic) 6 Winter Nelis Pears (Certified Organic) 6 Mandarins The most interesting thing in the box: Mushrooms. Not that they are strange, but because this is the first time we’ve seen mushrooms …

Design at The Food Show

Published by

I’ll be honest. I buy food and wine that has beautiful packaging. My pulse quickens, I may gasp aloud and I’ve been known to squeal with delight. I am an absolute sucker for pretty bottles, labels, quirky illustrations and unique materials. As a print designer who also happens to be obsessed with food, I would love nothing more than to design just for the food. All day, every day. Heaven. Yesterday at The Food Show was like food design geek OVERLOAD. So many lovely designs. So little time. It was a lovely surprise to see The Good Tempered Chocolate Company at The Food Show. The ornate, hand drawn logo I designed for Hayley was on display for everyone to see. Excite! Hayley’s hand made chocolates are to die for and she sweetens me up by bringing me her wonderful treats to sample. I had the pleasure of trying her new Peanut Butter Deluxe Chocolate a few weeks ago and she launched it at The Food Show. Hayley shared a stall with Pic’s Really Good Peanut Butter. The …

The Food Show 2012 – Top Tips

Published by

The Food Show at the ASB Showgrounds in Auckland started today. It kind of snuck up on me this year. I guess hibernating over winter does that. I really enjoy the Food Show and unlike other foodie events, this one is aimed more at the every day consumer rather than the gourmet. We are lucky that we have two big foodie expos  here in Auckland and I like to think of The Food Show as the supermarket and home cook expo, whereas Taste is the restaurant and gourmet expo. The Food Show a mega space and walking through the maze of exhibitors will tire you out. Take breaks when you can. Seating is pretty rare at the expo, but there are many seated food demonstrations in the makeshift theatre if you want a reprieve from meandering the halls. If you are heading that way this weekend, here are some tips I’ve compiled from years of experience… Food Show top tips: Avoid queues and buy your tickets online. Bring cash (notes and coins) as there is a …

Meal Plan Week 4

Published by

I never was a weekly meal planner, but I guess it was only a matter of time. I am a obsessive list maker. I bet there is loads of psychology on list makers. I’m sure they have merit. I feel a kindred spirit in other obsessive list makers. Over the last month of CSA boxes, meal plans have helped us get through our produce. Without a plan, every meal would feel like a quickfire challenge from Top Chef. This is my fourth meal plan and serves mostly as a guide. Meal plan week 4 Honey-soy-lemon roast chicken drums, kumara and potatoes* with garlicky* pan-fried silverbeet* and buttered peas Stir fry beef with cabbage*, garlic*, broccoli*, onion and udon noodles Lamb sausages with cabbage* and mandarin* slaw, baked potatoes with sour cream Deviled pork sausages with and pink lady apple* on kumara* mash, served with a side of steamed broccoli “Whatever is left” vegetable soup with toasted cheese ciabatta Bacon and avocado* pasta topped with shaved vintage cheddar Avocado* on toasted ciabatta* Fruit and yoghurt Banana*, …

OOOOBY Box Week 4

Published by

After a break, this week we are going back to OOOOBY’s original box. After reviewing OOOOBY’s service last week with all prices and produce calculated up, the Original Box is great value for money. This week our CSA box included: Vegetable 5 Kumara (Certified Organic) 2 Garlic (Certified Organic) 1 bunch Silverbeet (Certified Organic) 1 Avocado (Certified Organic) 1/2 Cabbage (Conventional Sprays) 1 Broccoli (Conventional Sprays) Fruit 7 Pink Lady Apples (Conventional Sprays) 10 Green Kiwifruit (Certified Organic) 10 Mandarins (Conventional Sprays) The weirdest thing in the box is: Nothing in the CSA was weird this week, but we did receive three small snails. A fair reminder that the produce is fresh and organic. Add Ons This week we added on a few extras such as pure apple juice, ciabatta and a bunch of fair trade bananas. Recipes This week there are 3 recipes included by OOOOBY and they were two salads and a frittata. CSA Link Party I am part of a CSA box link party. A link party is a weekly or monthly …

Make French Onion Soup

Published by

I’ve always wanted to try French Onion Soup. I guess it’s the golden cheese and toast topping that sets it apart from other soups. It always looks so rustic and lovely and caramalised onions are delicious so I added it to my to do list at the start of this winter. This winter has not gone well. I’ve been sick for six weeks so far with a cold and then a nasty, lingering cough. As much as I love hibernating in winter, I prefer the choice of hibernation. I jokingly call this quarantine, but I’d trade all these days off work to be well again. I get chest and back pains if I sit or lie a certain way, or strain my chest muscles the tiniest bit. I feel pathetic. I can’t open tight jars, I can’t cut pumpkin or kumara, I can’t fill the kettle to the top and carry it two steps to it’s spot away from the sink, I can’t reach up to get things out of high shelves, I can’t lift a roast …

An OOOOBY Review

Published by

OOOOBY stands for Out Of Our Own Backyards and is an Auckland-based company that offers Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). CSA has been popular in other countries for years and with the trend towards organic and locally grown foods as well as growing in our own backyards, it is a recipe for success. Last week, we switched from the vege/fruit original OOOOBY Box to the Vegetable Box. The Vegetable Box costs $8 more than the Original Box but has a hefty amount of vegetables. With double the vegetables, it was too much for two people. We’re both back to working 40 hour weeks at the moment so I’m not eating at home as much. Therefore, we are taking a break from our subscription this week so I’ll take a moment to review OOOOBY’s services so far. Boxes We’ve had three deliveries and tried two different boxes out of their range of four. We tried the Original Box and also the Vegetable Box. We haven’t tried  the Fruit Box and Family Box which don’t suit our two-person …