All posts filed under: Eats

OOOOBY BOX WEEK 3

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To get more efficient in our grocery shopping this winter, we are replacing the 2 to 3 trips per week to the market, with a weekly CSA delivery. I plan on topping this up with a fortnightly trip to (or maybe even delivery from) traditional supermarket and a fortnightly trip to Nosh (a local gourmet food store). Local CSA project OOOOBY has a great concept and ethic and we are in week 3 of our subscription. This week our CSA box included: Vegetables only 2 bulbs of garlic (self certified organic) 4 kaffir lime leaves (self certified organic) Half a crown pumpkin (certified organic) 1 cabbage (conventional sprays) 7 carrots (conventional sprays) 2 broccoli (certified organic) 2 silverbeet (certified organic) 1 stick of rosemary Fruit and sweet vegetables There is no fruit this week as we’re trying out OOOOBY’s vegetable only box. We still have kiwifruit left over from last week so we aren’t entirely fruitless. I got an Add On of kumara sourdough instead of ciabatta this week for a change. For those not in kiwi-land, kumara is the Maori word …

Kale chips and a CSA box review for Week 2

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The Koala: “What are you making?” Me: “I’ve already eaten them. They were kale chips.” The Koala: “Kale?…Chips?!? What were they like?” Me: “Like dry, crunchy leaves. I ate the whole bowl.” The Koala was unconvinced and secretly glad there were no kale chips left. Even I’m not convinced, but I did eat all of them before I realised what was happening. A good way to get rid of an abundance of kale I guess. This recipe is easy and you might as well give it a try if you have kale. Maybe you’ll like it. Or maybe you’ll find that you ate the lot before you could decide if you liked kale chips or not. Just make sure you keep a close eye on these suckers in the oven because they can burn in a heartbeat. Kale Chips Makes a bowl enough for 1 or 2 as a snack Ingredients 1 bunch of kale 1 tablespoon olive oil A sprinkle of salt, paprika, and/or garlic salt Preparation Pre-heat oven to 170°C/340°F. Pick the leaves from …

OOOBY BOX WEEK 1

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CSA CSA is a way for locals to support their local food growers and producers but subscribing to a set price per season (or month) in return for a weekly delivery of produce. I’ve written about CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in 2009. Back then I wasn’t in a hurry to sign on because of lack of control over what we received. 3 years on, I appreciate the concept more. CSA is a great way to get variety into your weekly meals with local, seasonal and organic produce. It connects local growers and their communities together in the most efficient way possible. CSA usually involves fruit and vege, but there is also CSA for meat and eggs, and CSF which stands for Community Supported Fishery. In the summer, I adore my walks two to three times a week to the various local markets to buy fresh food. But now that it’s winter, the days are short and cold and it’s dark by the time I get home from work. No part of me wants to leave home and walk …

Cook Curry Goat

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Since I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittinstall’s curry goat episode on River Cottage, I’ve been obsessed with trying curry goat. Curry goat is curry goat. Do not call it goat curry. There’s a difference. I’m not sure what the difference is, but asking for goat curry at any Jamaican eatery is sure to have you ridiculed and branded as a floundering noob. I tried a delicious Carribean curry goat over the summer at Splore Festival (pictured). The food stall was run by catering company Jamaican Me Hungry and the goat was divine (though it could have done with a little food styling). I couldn’t wait another two years to try curry goat again so last week, I made curry goat at home. Goat Meat Goat meat isn’t popular here in New Zealand. No, our prized beast here is lamb. But as tasty as lamb is, it can can be expensive and often reserved for special occasions. I have never cooked with goat meat and I can’t say I’ve eaten it many times, but I’ve enjoyed it every …

Dried mushrooms and a recipe from my childhood

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Like many Cantonese children, I grew up regularly eating what I we call Dong Gu. Dong Gu literally means “winter mushroom” and is also known as a Shiitake or Chinese Black Mushroom. Dried Shiitake mushrooms are used in various asian cuisines and are inexpensive, easy to use and if stored correctly, last a long time. Dried Shiitake mushrooms taste nothing like fresh Shiitake. Dried have an intensely savoury earthy flavour and the fresh stuff tastes weak in comparison. Do not substitute fresh for dried! My family always bring back a bag or two of dried mushrooms back from trips to Hong Kong, but New Zealand customs can be frightful to deal with so it’s not really recommended. Luckily, you can buy dried Shiitake at any Asian grocer these days, perhaps even at your general supermarket. Dried Mushrooms Tips: Once open, store mushrooms in the freezer. While they will last outside the freezer, they can inevitably attract moths and other nasties. No need to thaw before rehydrating as the lack of water means these don’t really …

Siam Rice Thai Cookery School

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This week, I made a Tom Yum Gai (hot and spicy chicken soup) at Siam Rice Thai Cookery School. Read about my Tom Yum experience here. Cookery school is a great value way to spend the day at 900 baht($38NZ/$28US) per person, includes hotel transfers, ingredients, class, market tour, 6 dishes, 1 curry paste and a vegetable carving session. I purposely chose to cook 6 different dishes to those I cooked at Baan Thai. If this were a science experiment, I would have repeated the dishes. You will not need to eat anything else on the day, so the price includes your meals for the entire day. A full day course runs from 9.30am to 3.30pm and runs at a good, relaxed pace. There are half day and evening classes available for those with limited time (Evening course: 800 baht. Half day course: 700 baht). No hard sell on anything at all. If you wanted to buy beer or souvenirs, you had to get up and enquire, but they were reasonable 50-70 baht for a …

No Big Players in Laos

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Like many others, one of the things I most look forward to when traveling to exotic locations, is the local cuisine. I always try to sample a nation’s well known dishes, as well as their lesser known ones. Far from home, the food can be challenging, comforting, and humbling. But even so, after just a few days of authentic food, all I want is a sinful pizza or burger or pasta. What is it about these kinds of meals that grab a hold of you and why do I feel so guilty indulging? While traveling through Laos last week, quite probably my favorite country to visit out of all the countries that I have been to so far, I was struck by how ubiquitous the pizza, burger and pasta menu is. Laos food is simple, fresh and delicious and I love how good it makes me feel. I am no food scientist, but it’s possible the free range and organic ingredients are the culprits. Almost every restaurant offers local Laos fare as well as pizzas, …

Do Something With Eggplant

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As well as attempting to try new beloved recipes this autumn, I put “Do something with eggplant” on my list of things to try. You can read more about my autumn list here. Eggplant is one of those vegetables I loathed as a child. Shiny and sinister looking, their heft is light beyond their size. Slimy and bitter and neither egg nor plant, this weird looking vegeta-fruit was not a friend of mine. I hated mushrooms – which I adore now, courgettes (zucchini) – which I also love now. Over the summer, eggplant made appearances at a few BBQ feasts and I let my guard down. Maybe it was time to be a grown-up and try eggplant again. I decided to cook with eggplant for the first time ever. Maybe I should have introduced it slowly, as a minor part of a meal, rather than diving in and making it the star of the show. We had two eggplants and ate them with an orzo salad. I picked yellow and red tomatoes and rosemary from …

Make A Chowder (Salmon Head and Mussel Chowder)

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Salmon. I love it raw. I love it cooked. I love it smoked. I love it poached. I love it pan fried. I love it baked. I love it steamed. It is creamy, fishy and super rich. Everything I’ve read says that salmon makes too strong a stock. I’m not afraid of a strong fish stock, but if a strong stock makes you queasy, this recipe is not for you. I’ve wanted to make a chowder for the longest time and a quiet, Autumn weekend at home last month was a good time for it. You can easily spend too much on seafood for a chowder. Sure, it will be delicious, but what about making a delicious chowder using cheaper ingredients? I picked up 2 salmon heads for cheap at my local asian market. Fish heads are usually cheap and I’ve been eyeing these up for a while now, wondering what to do with them. To prepare, make sure the gills are removed – they usually are. Cut the fins off with a pair of …

Make Bacon

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After reading the book Heat by Bill Buford, I’ve dreamed of curing my own pork. Curing meat uses salt to draw out the moisture and this allows the meat to last much longer. When the apocalypse that we’re all waiting for hits, we might need low tech techniques like these to make our food go further. Maybe. In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with home made bacon just for fun. Traditionally, pig slaughter takes place in autumn, after a summer of fattening up and curing begins at this time of year too. The work is generally done outside and needs cooler temperatures to keep the meat happy. Winter is too cold in many parts of the world to work outdoors, so Autumn is the perfect season. Also, in the northern hemisphere, the holiday season follows soon after autumn and there is much appreciation of pork over the festive feast period. Christmas ham anyone? I’ve always loved the idea of curing/brining my own bacon. I wasn’t sure if I was going to smoke it too since I …

Make a feijoa preserve

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The first fruit to drop from our feijoa tree went unnoticed by us, but Tofu the bunny sniffed it out and ate half of it before I caught him. Considering Tofu is blind, that is top marks to the  bunny. Tofu loves feijoa and we have to check the backyard daily to clean up all the fallen feijoa or else he will eat more than is good for him. For those outside the loop, feijoa (Pronounced fee-JO-ah) are a guava with a perfumey, tart flavour and a grainy texture similar to pear. The originated in South America and I’m not how they found their way to Auckland, New Zealand, but the feijoa season here is short, intense and adored by many. We count our lucky stars that our rental has a thriving feijoa tree in the backyard. I have fond memories of feijoa season, we would sit around the table, eating feijoa and stacking up the emptied cups as we ate until the towers bent and swayed. In Cantonese, we call them “FEE-jo. To eat a feijoa, …

Individual Steak and Guinness Pies

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In honour of  St. Paddy’s Day, I invited my friends over for a pot luck dinner. The theme for the dinner was green or Irish and we had a pesto green starter and several green desserts. I made individual steak and Guinness Pies and we also had a green hued potato and pea mash. I confess. I’m not a huge fan of Guinness. I can drink it, but I find it heavy and savoury and pint or bottle is usually enough for me. I do however, enjoy it in a pie. You will need a lidded pot for this recipe (I used a dutch oven) and a 6up muffin tin. This is not the time for a dainty cupcake tin. My muffin tin makes large muffins about 3 inches or 8 cm wide at the base. To measure out how wide I needed the pie cases, I first measured across the wall+base+wall of a muffin tin with the edge of a teatowel and matched this measurement across the mouth a bowl. This bowl became the “cookie …

Farmhouse Pasties

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I’m glad I gave the traditional Cornish Pasty recipe a whirl already this autumn. Now I’m inspired to do some weird, non-authentic pasties. This next recipe uses some of the original ingredients like beef, lamb, onion and potatoes, but also puff pastry, bacon, carrots and cheese. You can put the cheese inside the pastie if you prefer, but I’ve sprinkled cheese on the outside. I thought it would look prettier, but it only looks ok.  I’m loving smoked cheddar at the moment. It has a distinctive smokey flavour that is divine with streaky bacon. I’m buying ethical meat when it’s convenient, even though free range vs organic vs free farmed can be confusing to the average home cook. It’s nice to remember that at least here in New Zealand, lamb and beef are free farmed at minimum. At best, they’re free range. I don’t think there are any wild cows or wild sheep out there. Although that might be interesting! Lamb and beef I consider my “happy meats”. It’s only chicken and pork you have …

Make Cornish Pasties

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After trying both venison and beef versions of Sarah’s Cornish Pasties at Splore a few weeks ago, I was hell bent on making some of my own. For those that aren’t familiar with Cornish Pasties, they’re a submarine-shaped pie and traditional ingredients include beef or lamb, potatoes, swedes and onion. These  parcels of goodness were originally baked for tin miners who worked underground and didn’t come up  to air at lunch. They ate these pies and with their dirty, arsenic laden paws. They clutched the crust, ate the pastie and discarded the soiled crust at the end to avoid poisoning. Cornish pasties are baked from raw ingredients and it surprised me that both the meat and the vegetables cooked perfectly in these parcels. Short crust pastry is traditional but after eating these, I may retry with puff pastry because I adore puff pastry. I find short crust to be a bit heavy. I used both lamb and beef (why pick one when you can have both), potato, swede and onion. This recipe adapted from the NZ …

Make Cornbread – Savoury and sweet

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Cornbread. Southern States. The Green Mile. Comfort food. Wholesome. The word cornbread just feels round and nice in your mouth. You say it with warm, drawn-out Rrrr sounds. Southern States remember? I think of the movie The Green Mile and how cornbread was presented as a heartwarming thank you present. John Coffey: I’m smellin’ me some cornbread. Paul Edgecomb: It’s from my missus. She wanted to thank you. John Coffey: Thank me for what? Paul Edgecomb: Well, you know… Paul Edgecomb: For a helping me. John Coffey: Helping you with what? Paul Edgecomb: You know. John Coffey: Ohh. Was your missus pleased? Paul Edgecomb: Several times. We don’t eat cornbread here in New Zealand but they talk about it so much in the movies that I’ve always wanted to try it. I always assumed it was a bread eaten in place of a bread roll for hearty meals. But now I see that it has more of a cake texture. I used the basic cornbread recipe over at The Fresh Loaf only I used polenta …

Make a big pot of chili

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I’ve made various short-cut variations of chili over the years, always in a frying pan, always just enough for two and always with a minimum of fuss. I wanted to make a bit ‘ol pot of the stuff so we could eat our way through it for as long as we could bear. Chili con carne literally translates to “chili with meat”. You know, carne, as in carnivore. Looking online, there are many variations and I was quite surprised that beans in chili is not regarded as authentic. Chili always appears with beans around here and I’ve never had chili without beans. It seems that in poorer areas, beans were added to make the dish go further and it became more common. A chili purist’s proverb goes “If you know beans about chili, you know chili ain’t got no beans”. My chili is mild and includes beans. Add more hot sauce or chili if you prefer something with more kick. A Big Pot of Chili Makes about 3 litres or 12 cups. A serving is …

Roll Sushi

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In the very early ’90s, sushi became popular in New Zealand and I found out the sushi that I already loved, wasn’t cherished among my peers. Not then anyway. Before this discovery, my sister and I had been happily enjoying raw fish sushi in uncool bliss. At school, instead of bags of chips, we snacked on small packs of dried seaweed. When The Koala and I visited Osaka, Japan in 2008, we were surprised to find sushi we are familiar with here in NZ, is quite different to Japanese sushi. Like so many imports, sushi has morphed away from tradition. Tried and true is great, but weird reproductions can be great too. NZ was not ready for raw fish in early ’90s. There had to be another way. Chicken sushi, which is novelty in Japan, converted hoards of New Zealanders to sushi and it’s unlikely you’ll find a sushi joint in NZ that doesn’t offer it. Where would we be without wacky combinations to humour our palates? Some less than authentic sushi I’ve enjoyed over …

Jamaican Me Hungry

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I heard of Jamaican Me Hungry when I tried their jerk pork at Splore 2010. Splore is my favourite music festival and Jamaican Me Hungry is my favourite Jamaican food source. They are caterers based out in Warkworth which makes them pretty niche. Jamaican food isn’t big here in NZ and I guess there isn’t much of a Jamaican population here. It’s shame because their food translates very well. 2 years later, last Sunday at Splore 2012, I had the pleasure of trying their curry goat. Wow. I was worried it would be a intense for a Sunday bungday (one that could have been hangover city), but I was feeling pretty good (considering the liquor and lack of sleep). The goat was oh-my-goodness delicious. I’m just sad that these guys don’t have a restaurant I can access. I really hope that the next Jamaican food I have is sooner than Splore 2014. http://www.jamaicanmehungry.co.nz

Summer is Peachy

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As we officially set upon the final week of the New Zealand summer, it feels like the climate is stubbornly refusing to let go of the heat. Sometimes I can’t decide if it’s hotter inside than out. Things are sticky. Especially after a hot afternoon nap. We’ve been cheated of summer this year with monsoon rainfall that is common in other exotic islands. So while Autumn will hit us in a couple of weeks, it still feels like mid-summer. Who knows? Maybe we’ll still be picnicking in April. It is peach season and I have no hard feelings for the fuzzy skinned fruit. I can eat it without peeling. But the salsa I made this week is more about flavour than the texture. This salsa tastes zingy and fresh. I haven’t added any chili to it, but you can add a sliced chili if you prefer. Serve with fish, chicken, steak or sausages. Tasty enough to add just a spoon but moorish enough to eat like a side salad. Use a nectarine if that’s all you have handy. Peach Salsa …

Seeing Red

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On our Valentine’s Day, we enjoyed a scarlet feast of both sweet and savoury with friends in our backyard until late. Red is one of my favourite colours and it was fun to eat and dress for the occasion. There are loads of red foods and drinks out there and everyone really got into the spirit. Our read feast included: Red velvet cupcakes, jam tarts, pies, cheerios (cocktail sausages) with tomato sauce, home made salsa with nachos, spaghetti and meatballs, plenty of red wine, virgin and non-bloody mary drinks. Instead of having two or three courses, we  put everything on the table and as we pleased. Much like a children’s birthday party, where you don’t distinguish  the appropriate order of eating chips, lollies, fairy bread, sausage rolls or cake. It was a fun way to eat…even if a little sickening. I’m already thinking of the next excuse to have a themed pot-luck.