All posts tagged: food

Malthus, Meal A Day

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Meet Malthus. Malthus is an aquaponics* unit that is designed for the next generation’s home kitchen. This is a conceptual piece and has a planned production of 100 pieces. It grows 1 portion of salad and 1 portion of fish each day. I love the concept but I wouldn’t enjoy eating the same food every day. You wouldn’t enjoy me blogging about fish and salad every day! Or would you? Maybe I could rename the blog “365 ways with fish and salad”. I could write a cookbook for future generations. But…if you could grow 1 portion a day of any meal, what would it be? More info here at Conceptual Devices. * I’m guessing aquaponics is a portmanteau for aqua+hydroponics.

A Dinner inspired by South East Asia

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  I had a hankering for the stuff we ate while in South East Asia. Hot, sour and savoury soups, banana pancakes were eaten in balmy countries. But what about on a cold winter’s night? I thought they would translate quite well so I made a brothy soup with noodles with some nice sirloin steak. I made this up on the fly using some of the flavours I enjoyed in South East Asia. This was followed by a dessert of asian-inspired banana pancakes with melted chocolate. Yum. Bok choy is cheap and it is super easy to grow. I know this because I’ve grown it before. But at $0.50 for a bag of 2 or 3 bok choy at my local Chinese supermarket, I don’t bother to grow my own. So easy to prepare, just wash and slice into quarters lengthwise. Good rabbit food too. When we have bok choy, Tofu the rabbit also enjoys bok choy. Beef Noodle Soup Beef Ingredients 1 piece of sirloin steak enough for 2 (200-300g) A little sesame oil …

Wedges Are Friends With Homemade Burgers

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  As much as I like fast food, homemade burgers with real beef patties you have formed yourselves are world apart. Every time we make burgers (and it’s becoming quite a regular occurrence) we manage to find this and that in our fridge until the burger becomes a towering monstrosity. So this time, even though I thought we had virtually nothing, there was still cheese to be melted, an onion to be sliced and fresh rocket from the garden. Not a towering world wonder, but still mighty good. With plenty of practice, I’ve perfected oven baked wedges. These are a perfect friend for your homemade burgers. Oven Baked Spicy Wedges Ingredients 3 large potatoes 1 tablespoon oil 1 tablespoon flour 1 tablespoon chili seasoning* (Mild, try 2 tablespoons for medium) Salt Pepper Preparation  Pre-heat oven to 200°C / 390°F.  Cut potatoes in half lengthwise and then into quarters and then eighths. All lengthways. You know, like wedges.  Place in a clean, airtight plastic bag.  Add all the other ingredients, twist the top tight and give …

Maketu Pies

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I spied the Maketu Pie shelf in the deli section at the supermarket the other day so I bought 2 of their mussel pies. “Kiwi mussels cooked in a beautiful creamy cheese and parsley sauce then encased in our handmade, flakey golden pastry.” I feel like I’m a late bloomer when it comes to these pies. The few people I’ve spoke to all said they love Maketu Pies. I popped these in the oven and served with a simple green salad with tinned beetroot slices. I really enjoyed this pie. Full of flavour without all the salt. Store bought pies often have so much salt in them you can’t taste anything else. I guess it’s just as well because sometimes the ingredients in pies aren’t things you want to be tasting. I like the fact that these pies have a very short shelf life. As mussels should be. I’ll be buying these again for an easy quick dinner. I actually think the 2 for $6 “special” is their permanent pricing. More on Maketu Pies including a …

Salmon and an easy guacamole

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I had a ripe avocado and I figured it was time I used my mortar and pestle for something other than grinding salt and spices. I’m glad I did. Himalayan rock salt, peppercorns and 2 cloves of garlic were ground down to form a paste… …then I added a whole avocado followed by half a pot of sour cream and a sprinkling of chili seasoning. A big dollop of guac went well with our salmon dinner. Salmon makes my world rosy.

Overeat at a Steamboat

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For those who are unfamiliar with this style of cooking, a brief introduction: Steamboat begins with simmering stock to cook a range of raw (or pre-cooked) ingredients at the table. Everyone at the table participates and take turns fishing out their cooked treats. Various sauces are used for dipping. Personally, I prefer a beaten raw egg with a little oil, soy sauce and chili. The egg helps to cool the food so that you can eat it fairly quickly. Other names include hot pot or Chinese fondue. Many different cuisines have a variation of this and are known as Shabu shabu in Japan, Thai suki in Thailand and Lẩu in Vietnam. It’s easy to overeat at a steamboat because you never really know how much you have eaten. So you cook a piece and eat a piece until you can’t do it any more. Steamboat is usually a big social affair and with lots of people, there are usually lots of different dishes. This time it was just my parents, sister and The Koala and …

Hawker Food: Banana Pancakes

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If you are up past bedtime in tourist areas of Thailand or Laos, you will find a banana pancake cart. Pancake vendors are one hit wonders and rarely make anything else. Hawker food or street food lends itself to specialisation. That is why I love it so much. These pancakes aren’t made from a poured batter. Like roti, a piece of dough is flicked and stretched out so big I worry it might tear. Oil and/or ghee is added to a hot surface and the pancake quickly but carefully peeled and put on the pan. The result is an oily crepe. As it cooks, a banana is expertly sliced and dropped into the centre and chocolate sauce and/or condensed milk swirled on top. The corners of the pancake are folded into the middle, topped with more ghee and the package is then flipped over. When it’s done, the banana pancake is transferred to a paper plate, cut into bite-sized squares and served with sticks. It’s perfect late night food for travelers and the average price …

Eating in Koh Tao

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Epic mealtimes at Chalok Bay, Koh Tao, Thailand. Almost every restaurant served Thai, American, Italian and Mexican cuisine. Specialisation in tourist destinations is for fools. In Asia, it’s only at places that locals frequent that you get 1 chef, 1 dish specialities. Seaview Restaurant at Chalok Bay Our favourite place to eat was Seaview Restaurant which had a nice dining deck on the beach overlooking the bay. Right in the centre of Chalok Bay, you could swim from this area at high tide. Shoes off, low tables and triangle cushions give this place a super laid back vibe. We never dined inside, but it had a really modern, comfortable interior. Kind of a like a super modern beach bach. Beach burgers. We had these a couple times actually. Niçoise salad. Pineapple Shrimp. The shrimp were great. They had a fluffy almost fish like texture. A little chili made this a perfectly tropical meal. Of course, I had mango shake to go with this. Mango shakes are basically fresh mango blended with ice. Creamy Carbonara. Pad Thai …

Eating in Koh Samui

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To save time, we flew from Chiang Mai to Koh Samui rather than train and bussing it through Thailand. We had been landlocked for long enough (over a month since we had seen the sea) and all we wanted was to be at the beach. Our flights weren’t cheap at 7000 baht / $280NZ / $230US each but if you don’t fancy wasting days on trains or money on accommodation while traveling through a country, it’s a reasonable option. We were explicitly told by friends not to visit Koh Samui. But there’s nothing quite like disliking a place because you’ve been there. So we spent 2 nights in Koh Samui before heading to Koh Tao. Koh Samui is the more built up of the islands on the east coast of Thailand. Koh means island so the locals refer to it simply as Samui. Back in Chiang Mai and in Laos, beers generally cost 40 to 60 baht. The very first beer we had on Koh Samui was a small Singha for a whopping 120 baht …

Eating Thai and Vietnamese at The Kad

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The Kad Klang Wiang area is in the middle of Old City in Chiang Mai. An open air courtyard with shops and restaurants all around. There is a good mixture of classy and cheap places to eat here and while many are for tourists only, there are a couple of places that are frequented by the locals. Tourists spend a lot of time on their feet so it was nice to have a place that you could just have a sit at. Trees provide some good shade. Sate Salad & Spice Papaya Salad was on my list of dishes to try while in Thailand. In this dish, green papaya is mixed with fresh chili, garlic, fish sauce, lime juice and palm sugar. I asked for not too spicy, but this was really spicy. The flavours were intense – salty, spicy and sour. It was like eating a whole bowl of condiments. I crossed it off my “To Eat” list but I’m afraid I’m not a fan. I have a feeling that this dish is usually eaten with other …

Art Cafe, Chiang Mai

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Art Cafe is right by the Thapae Gate between McDonald’s and Starbucks. We ate there every second day so they must have been doing something right. The menu is huge and they are yet another restaurant that serves Italian, Mexican and Thai food. Good food at good prices. We may have been subliminally enticed by the name of the cafe, but there is no interesting art in here and while the interior is a bit dated, but it’s clean and light. Breakfast at Art Cafe With one of the most extensive breakfast menus around, I loved that they had lots of mexican inspired breakfast dishes. We don’t eat Mexican for breakfast in New Zealand but I love beans and rice first thing in the morning. The quesadilla were really good. 3 Buttermilk pancakes. Omelette with country fried potatoes and a croissant. Thai food They do offer Thai food, but it’s only ok. There are better and cheaper places around for Thai. After all, this is Thailand! If you want Thai, eat where locals eat. A …

Familiar food at Phil’s and Top 10 foods to eat after dental surgery

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Even the most adventurous eater yearns for the food of home. Here are our experiences in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. At Phil’s Diner, we found a hearty breakfast, soft food for after dental surgery and recovery food for the days following. There is a nice outdoor area out the back though they were never busy when we visited. Dinner sized portions of mash and gravy aren’t on the menu anywhere, but when I saw that bangers and mash were at Phil’s Diner, I begged Phil to whip up some. Phil especially prepared a dinner-sized portion of mashed potatoes and gravy for the post-surgery Koala. Phil’s Diner is not gourmet, it’s decent, familiar food. We loved local food but sometimes exotic local food can get too much and you yearn for the food back home. Comfort food can be particularly important after surgery. Our first breakfast in Chiang Mai was eaten at Phil’s Diner. I loved the look of my Shakshouka eggs (quite similar to my beloved Bus-Stop Eggs) and The Koala was pretty chuffed about his breakfast grill. …

40 days and 40 nights

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40 days into our epic SE Asia adventure and we had eaten amazing things in 7 exotic countries. 40 nights into our epic SE Asia adventure and I missed cooking. I met up with Leanne and Kathy, the lovely Australian sisters from our tour, for a cooking class at Baan Thai Cookery School in Chiang Mai. At Baan Thai, I cooked and ate 4 dishes at one of their evening classes. Chicken pad thai (fried noodle dish), Seafood in coconut milk soup, Green curry with chicken and fish cakes. The green curry was the best green curry I have ever tasted. It was the last dish of the night so I had a pretty good idea of how much curry paste I liked by then. This was spot on. The instructors will encourage you to use plenty of chili and curry paste, but hopefully you know what you can handle and can be firm about how much you want to use in your dishes. You’re the one that has to eat it after all. My finished …

Make Polenta

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I have this rule that I don’t cook anything that I haven’t eaten before. It generally works well. I eat, I like, I cook. But then I broke that rule. I don’t know why I decided that I’d cook polenta. I put it on my list of things to attempt this Autumn/Winter even though I hadn’t had it before, but I cooked it and ate it and I didn’t like it. I followed the package instructions, even adding cheese and butter (which was optional). It was really, really bland. The Koala likened it to watery custard and ate everything else on the plate. I guess it looks like a gritty custard. I would have much preferred mashed potatoes for dinner. In any case, I’ve got a whole package of polenta that I don’t know what to do with. Is there anyone out there that likes polenta? What’s your polenta recipe? Failing that, does anyone want a big bag of polenta? Minus 1 cup, but there’s probably about 10 cups in there still. You can have …

Cook with Squid Ink

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In the novel The Snack Thief, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is invited for dinner by the police Superintendent. “My wife will prepare spaghetti in squid ink. An exquisiteness”.  Then the day before the dinner: “Superintendent? I am calling to say I am really mortified, but won’t be able to make it for dinner tomorrow.” “You are mortified because we cannot meet, or because of the squid ink pasta?” “Both Sir.” A few years ago, I read The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri. I’m not sure when my fascination with squid ink pasta began, but this novel could have been it. It’s a crime novel set in Sicily where the quirky main character, Inspector Salvo Montalbano solves murder mysteries but also tucks into lovely Sicilian feasts. Pasta dishes and seafood seem to be the gastronomic detective’s favourites and the feasts are described in enough detail to make you salivate. If you enjoy crime novels and you enjoy reading about food like I do, Andrea Camilleri is a name to remember. There is something remarkably cool about shiny black pasta. …

Looks like poo, tastes like awesome.

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I did my best to make this look pretty, but there’s no two ways about it, stewed fruit and melted chocolate looks horrible. I made this recipe up based on what I had on hand. No reason why you can’t do the same. By all means, experiment! And eat the evidence. Feijoa  (pronounced fee-jo-ah) can be replaced with berries or stone fruit. Feijoa Custard with Chocolate and Cointreau Makes 2 Ingredients 12 feijoa 1 tablespoon sugar 1 shot of Cointreau 12 chocolate buttons plus 4 extra for garnish 1 cup of custard (chilled) Preparation Cut feijoas in half and scoop fruit out and into a small sauce pan. Add sugar and Cointreau. Simmer for 5-10 minutes. Stirring with a wooden spoon and breaking up the fruit as you go. When the fruit is all broken down and resembling baby food, drop in 12 chocolate buttons. Give the mixture gentle mix and divide into 2 ramekins. Top with custard and make a butterfly garnish on each dollop of custard using 2 extra chocolate buttons.

Unbelievably Easy Feijoa, Chocolate & Custard Pastries

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Tofu the bunny has been eating feijoas (pronounced fee-jo-ahs) and I have to check the lawns every day so that he doesn’t over eat. I toss any half eaten feijoas into the worm bin. The uneaten feijoas get turned into all sorts of yummy things. I made these babies for Natahma’s baby shower last week. It was the first baby shower I’ve ever been to and it was mostly just eating yummy food, talking about girl stuff and drinking champagne and feijoa wine. We didn’t play any silly games and the experience didn’t put me off having babies for life. These pastries are really easy to make and if you have a heavy feijoa tree in your yard, this is a good way to get rid of some. If you don’t have feijoas, I’m sure you could experiment with other fruit. I considered using plums and maybe still will at a later stage. I made something similar over a week ago but the latest ones are much, much better because they have chocolate in them. …

Baked fish and chips with coleslaw

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Happy Easter everyone! Hope you all have some feasting and chocolate eating this long weekend. We have both Mondays and Friday off for Easter. Is that the same the world over? I thought it fitting to write about fish today since Good Friday is traditionally a day when you abstain from meat, but apparently, fish is fair game. Personally, I don’t morally differentiate between eating fish and meat, but hey, I didn’t make the rules. If you don’t eat meat on Good Friday, you don’t eat meat on Good Friday. We don’t eat fish and chips very often. It’s not one of our regular takeaway choices – it’s a summer treat reserved for afternoons spent at the beach. Fish and chip shops here can be a bit hit and miss. Fresh fish comes at a price. The fish and chip shops by us are either too greasy or too expensive so it’s easier just to go without. Our too greasy local was to be just around the corner from our Sandringham flat and their “number …

Eating in Vang Vieng #3

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The following day was we continued to celebrate M’s birthday at a local Thai restaurant for breakfast. We had Tom Kha Gai and pineapple fried rice and enjoyed an amazing view. Overnight, the river was stained a terracotta colour. The locals said it was the first time it had it had happened and the rumour was that some construction upstream had caused it. In any case, we were glad that we weren’t tubing in the river that day. A shop in town carved figures from stone and also personalised them with a stamp on the bottom. We got our company logo carved into an elephant figure for only about $20 including the personalisation. He carved the logo backwards from a sample of our business card and it was ready to pick up later in the day. What a legend! Lunch was only ok, but at least the view was good. My laap was way too spicy and the green chillies were finely chopped and resembled the green beans which were also finely chopped. The Koala got …

Eating in Vang Vieng #1

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We left Vientiane in mid/late January and our group shared a large bus with another group of tourists. The 4 hours bus ride to Vang Vieng was pretty easy as the countryside is really picturesque. Rice paddies, cows, goats, children playing. At one point we drive past a long line of young monks. They are called novice monks when they are still learning and the procession was for a funeral. Vang Vieng is home for the next 2 and a half days. It can be lovely and peaceful and the surrounding limestone mountains can be seen from every part of town. This was the view from our guest house Kham Phone. One of the first sights we saw when we got to Vang Vieng was a herd of cows strolling through the town. They ate every potted plant in their path until they were chased away by unimpressed plant owners. Our first meal in Vang Vieng I had a yummy mango fruit shake and a chicken lao noodle soup and The Koala got a a bbq mix …