All posts tagged: bread

A Healthy Loaf

A basket of bread When a basket of fresh bread arrived on our doorstep, The Koala happened to be home alone. He confessed to me later that he wondered if the bread was part of a blog giveaway and perhaps he shouldn’t eat the bread. But his inner bread fiend won and he went ahead and helped himself to the bread.

Monday Bunday: Foodie Bunnies

  Hope you are having a great Easter! Today’s Monday Bunday is a real treat found via Pinterest. But try as I may, I cannot find any information on the original artist. How sweet are these foodie bunnies? The artist has expertly captured a specific type of bunny. I love the downturned mouths, short ears and compact shape and I can tell that the artist loves bunnies and food very much. I don’t know if these were posed and drawn from life or fictional scenes but I wouldn’t let Tofu the bunny within a metre of a whole croissant. He loves baked goods and would gobble it up without batting a third eyelid. I still remember one Easter when he stole a hot cross bun from my handbag. If you thought that rabbits couldn’t commit a crime, I can assure you, if there are baked goods involved, they are ruthless. If you recognise the these illustrations or better still, if you are the artist please comment below. Back to work tomorrow. Le sigh.

Roasted Garlic

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 …

Spiced Carrot & Coconut Soup

With the amount of eating over the last 7 days, I’ve been craving some simple vegetable dishes. I had half a loaf of Blackwoods Bakeries focaccia from the weekend and my parents had just given me a big bag of carrots. What started off as a pauper’s dinner got fancy real quick. Don’t let the carrots full* fool you. This is a rich and satisfying soup. *Edit: Wow, genuine Freudian slip. Spiced Carrot & Coconut Soup Dinner for 2 or a starter for 4. Ingredients 5 carrots 3/4 can coconut cream 3 cups stock (I used chicken but use vegetable if vegetarian) 1 teaspoon green curry paste (check if vegetarian) 1 tablespoon olive oil Sage garnish  *Use vegetable stock if you want to make this vegan or vegetarian Preparation Chop the ends off the carrots and cut into bite sized rounds. I didn’t see any point in peeling these ones, it’s up to you. In a large pot, quickly brown the carrots in olive oil. Add the green curry paste and stir through. Add stock, bring to …

Fake it ’til you make it

Is it possible to crave something you’ve never had before? I think so. I often read about foods on the internet and then I want them. I want them bad. Lobster rolls are associated with the lobster state of Maine in the U.S. and in New England and the Canadian Maritimes, some McDonald’s offer lobster rolls as a seasonal menu item. They call it the McLobster! We don’t get loster rolls here in New Zealand. I guess it’s because we don’t have lobster here, but we have plenty of things that could substitute. Crayfish would be the most obvious choice. Crab could also work if we were a nation that gobbled up crab. I was craving a lobster roll, but being on a budget – crayfish can be $100kg – I considered making it with surimi instead. At $8kg, surimi is not going to break the bank. Surimi is pretty forgiving too so you can make the mix ahead of time, refrigerate it and eat it over a few days. I’d never do that with fresh seafood though. …