All posts tagged: festival

Dreaming of plump, sweet scampi

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Auckland Anniversary means that our little city enjoys a 3 day weekend. This mid-Summer holiday means locals flock to the beach and the outdoors and gorge on fine food and booze (New Years resolutions already forgotten). If you’re interested in feasting on incredibly fresh, beautifully cooked seafood, head down to Halsey Wharf at Wynyard Quarter next weekend for the Auckland Seafood Festival. A community project with proceeds going to local charities, there’s all sorts of good juju in attending this festival. Not to be missed if you love seafood. With over 65 seafood dishes on the menu there is surely several dishes to tickle the tastebuds of seafood lovers. The Wild Seafood Challenge is on again and for $12 a good way to tick off some seafood boxes. This year’s Wild Seafood Challenge includes: Raw Kina Marinated Sea Cucumber in Coconut with Ginelli’s Lemon, Lime and Cucumber Sorbet Marinated Grilled small fish with Kawakawa aioli Grilled Octopus The Mussel Mary with Ginelli’s Champagne sorbet Grilled Scampi Last year’s super popular Scampi Street will be back and …

Tofu Tuesday: The Island of Hooha

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We had an amazing weekend at Splore Festival over the weekend. This year’s theme was The Island of Hooha and it was great seeing everyone dress up for the occasion. Tofu didn’t come to Splore but he still posed for a few photos with us in our costumes. Here he is with the Safari Explorer.         Check out previous Tofu Tuesday posts here.

Auckland Seafood Festival 2012

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Today, armed my sister, Joey, and our cameras, we tackled my first Auckland Seafood Festival. I always suspected that it would be an expensive exercise that wouldn’t be worthwhile. I was wrong. This festival really celebrates New Zealand seafood and the new location of Wynyard Quarter is perfect. Surrounded by water and boats old and new, the festival was beautifully decorated and it was often hard to figure out what props had been brought in to entertain the sea theme and what were already there. We arrived a little after 11am to a queue shortly after the doors opened. Greeted by seafood on ice, this was a nice preview of what was to come. If you don’t like seeing eyes on your food, then keep walking. We made our way around and quickly found something we couldn’t turn down. The Wild Seafood Challenge. There were 6 different items for $2 for each item or $9 for a platter of all 6. This included: kina, prawn killers, turbo shells, sea cucumber, octopus and kina shots. The …

Auckland Seafood Festival – coming up next

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I’ve been gorging myself on seafood lately. Prawns, salmon, white fish, sea cucumber, squid, more salmon, more prawns, more salmon…That’s just the last few days. I do love seafood and it generally seems to be the more politically correct “meat” to eat. It’s a long weekend here in Auckland as we celebrate Auckland Anniversary weekend. The Auckland Seafood Festival is on all weekend so if you are a seafood lover, it’s worth checking out. This will be my first time at the event so stay tuned for my report back this weekend. My sister Joey and I will be going on Saturday armed with appetites, cameras and general silliness. Tickets are $20 each and more more info can be found over at the event website: www.aucklandseafoodfestival.co.nz Things I have my eye on at the Auckland Seafood Festival: Scampi – If you like prawn, you really should try it’s hulking cousin. The meat is sweet and firm. Wild Seafood – If you’re into eating non-farmed food and are feeling a little adventurous, there is a Wildfood Seafood passport …

Tasting, tasting, 1, 2, 3.

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2011 will be my third Taste festival and I’m looking forward to trying and buying new delicious things and soaking up the good atmosphere down at Victoria Park. Taste of New Zealand kicks off this evening in Victoria Park, Auckland and the menu can be found on their website here or scroll to the bottom of this post. The dishes range from 8 to 20 crowns and a crown costs $1. This year, there are 13 restaurants offering 35 dishes. Quick breakdown: Dessert 5 Shellfish 5 Fish 5 Venison 3 Beef 3 Pork 3 Lamb 3 Duck 2 Chicken 2 Rabbit 1 Mixed grill 1 Vegetarian 1 There are loads of dishes for omnis and pescis, but only 1 vege dish of portobello mushroom. I ordered 4 dishes last year (all the ones on my wishlist) and I recommend 3 or 4 dishes per person for dinner. Don’t forget to make room for all the samples on offer. It’s great to have someone with you so you can sample their dishes too. Last year, we tasted …

Moon Rabbit

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We’re going to Canton Cafe in Kingsland for dinner tonight with the extended family in celebration of the Moon Festival (12 September 2011). Canton Cafe is one of my all time favourite restaurants and we’re super lucky that we live within a hop and a skip. One of the icons of the Moon Festival is the Moon Rabbit. I kid you not. I didn’t make this up. It’s on Wikipedia, so it must be true. 😉 The Moon rabbit, also called the Jade Rabbit, in folklore is a rabbit that lives on themoon, based on pareidolia that identifies the markings of the moon as a rabbit. The story exists in many cultures, particularly in East Asian folklore, where it is seen pounding in a mortar and pestle. I like to think that there is a culinary rabbit on the moon working away with it’s mortar and pestle. Maybe that is where the phrase “moon dust” comes from? Cultures that have the moon rabbit are Chinese, Japanese, Buddhist, Mexican and Native American (Cree). Also from Wiki: The moon rabbit was mentioned in the conversation between Houston and the Apollo …