All posts tagged: Foodgawker

Do something with rhubarb

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“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.” – Brian O’Driscoll I think you can consider a rhubarb as a vegetable in the same way that a tomato is a fruit. Rhubarb is completely alien to me. I recognise the word, but I I can’t say I have eaten rhubarb before. If I have, I mustn’t have been paying attention or maybe it was cooked with fruit and I wasn’t sure where the fruit ended and the rhubarb began. I was determined to do something with rhubarb this summer, and to know for sure what it was (and if I liked it). It’s a bit embarrassing that I wasn’t  sure what rhubarb looked like. I couldn’t identify it in the wild, although I’m generally pretty good at identifying edibles in the ground. I thought maybe it looked like silverbeet or celery only bright red. I was on the right track. I even claimed that I’d never seen rhubarb in any shops. Surely if I …

Make Ice Cream

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Merry Christmas everyone. I hope your day is filled with yummy treats and that your stretchy pants look as good this year. I look forward to catching up with family and eating lots of delicious things. Namely, a glazed ham. I dream of ham year round. The weather has really turned bright and hot for us this Christmas and with summer weather comes demand for ice cream. I successfully made ice cream for the first time and I stirred in a bit of home made russian fudge for a buttery flavour boost. No ice cream maker required, just an egg beater and plenty of bowls. I found this easy ice cream recipe online here by a user named Marble. I’ve reblogged it just in case that page ever disappears. I have very limited kitchen space so never had the desire to hoard a food processor or an ice cream maker. I love how the fanciest tool required for this recipe is an egg beater. No food processor or ice cream maker required! ICE CREAM Use 3 bowls …

Roasted Garlic

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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 …

Buttery Golden Pan-Fried Flounder

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When I was a little girl, a single steamed flounder, a plate of vegetables and plenty of rice would feed our family. My parents would allocate me and my sister a flounder roe each. Since flounder come with two roes by default, it was lucky they stopped at two kids. The roe was a treat!  The roe itself isn’t a thing of beauty, but I loved biting into it and imagining I was eating thousands of tiny fish at once. If you’re wondering what flounder roe tastes like, I find it mild and slightly creamy with a only hint of fishiness. The fish eggs are tiny – much smaller than other fish roe. Salmon is my number one fish, but if I must pick a white fish, it’s got to be flounder. I adore flounder but I usually steam or baked it. Flounder has a sweet flavour and a delicate texture. When cooked, it flakes with a little pressure and the large bones make it easy to eat whole. As a kid, my parents never shied away …

Lemonade

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A friend brought over a bag of real lemons. Real lemons are large, a deep yellow colour, with bumpy, thick skins. They smell super lemony – nothing like the anemic fake-looking lemons you get from supermarkets these days (what are they?!). Supermarket lemons make me frown. I was thirsty for something sweet and tart, so I made lemonade. I used a little of the J.Friend and Co honey that I received from a goodie bag for covering Out Standing In Their Fields a few weeks ago. The one I got is Vipers Bugloss. Don’t know what the heck that means? Me neither. Luckily, their website fills in all the gaps (it’s an alpine wild flower). It’s pretty awesome. You even get to know who the beekeepers are (Lucy and AJ), the vintage (2009) and where it is made (Clarence Valley, Muzzle Station). I’ve never needed to know that much about my honey, but it’s a nice touch. Especially in an age were ingredients come from all over the place. The first glass no doubt will …

Spiced Carrot & Coconut Soup

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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 …

Transferable skills

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I was at work and in my fist was a small piece of paper that said “Italy”. During the world cup season, we each had to bring in a morning tea based on our drawn countries. What to bring? There are many yummy Italian foods. Pizza, pasta, antipasto, breads…. Being a terrible baker, I challenged myself to bake for everyone at work. Chinese fighting muffins Light, fluffy bread and moist cakes? Never! It’s not my style. My baking is generally hard and dry. So I figured, why not harness my natural talent for making Chinese fighting muffins? Look upon it as a transferable skill. Maybe you have a negative cooking skill that could be turned right given the perfect recipe? Biscotti is hard and never moist. Biscotti is classy. Biscotti would be perfect. I found this online chocolate biscotti recipe by Susan from Farmgirl Fare. If I’m afraid of making something, the words easy and beginners in the heading makes a big difference. I worried about burning these since it’s hard to tell if dark brown biscotti …

Lemon Sugar and Elephant Ears

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This post has been written as part of the new Sweet New Zealand blogging event founded by Alessandra Zecchini. It’s a chance for kiwi bloggers to share their sweet treats, so if you are a kiwi blogger and are interested in participating, check it out for this month. This month’s event is event number 2 is hosted by Allison at Pease Pudding and more information can be found here. Lemon Sugar I’ve been wanting to make flavoured sugar for a while and with our lemon tree growing some beautiful, thick skined beauties this spring, I knew I had to do something with the zest. Using my microplane zester (I love that thing), I lightly scraped the outside layer of a lemon and let the zest dry for about an hour on a chopping board. I then layered zest and white sugar into a jar. Leave the sugar for at least a few days for the lemony oils to permeate into the sugar. The result is pretty, but I haven’t used this sugar just yet. With the zest that was …

The secret to making Vietnamese Spring Rolls

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Vietnamese spring rolls (or summer rolls) are one of my favourite things to eat and I always order this as starter when we visit a Vietnamese restaurant. The light, refreshing roll contrasts with a punchy sauce and I feel like I never get enough of these things. The beauty of making food at home is you can have as many pieces as you like. You can eat as many as you like for a main course without confusing your poor waiter. I’ve made these rolls once before but it was a messy failure. My mistake was to soak the rice paper in hot water and for too long. By the time you roll up, it disintegrates and you can forget about trying to eat them with any ounce of dignity. I have found the secret which I will share with you below. When we were eating in Hanoi, Vietnam at the start of this year, I noticed that the rice paper rolls were a tad under softened. That led me to believe that the rolls …

Whitianga Scallops

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The seafood people came bearing scallops that had been plucked fresh from Whitianga. I can’t resist a fresh scallop so I bought a bag of them for $26. I was hungry and fresh seafood is a weakness. When they are fresh, the are sweet, tender and not at all fishy. They have this this flavour that reminds me of oysters and lobster. I wish there were more words in our vocabulary to define the difference. Scallops are one of those seafoods that I have yet to overindulge in. Even when we’ve travelled to destinations where scallops are plentiful, we haven’t eaten to our limit. In New Zealand, we eat both the white adductor muscle and the orange/white coral. They are sold as one. Both the orange and the white part are equally delicious. I would feel cheated if I were served scallops with only the adductor muscle. I might eye the server suspiciously and impore, “Where is the rest of my scallop?!”. Scallops in the morning? I woke up thinking about scallops. The Koala asked, …

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 …

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. …

Burgers at Matakana House

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Opensouls, one of my favourite bands in the whole world, played their final show last Sunday. It was at Leigh Sawmill Cafe which is about an hour drive north. So we made an afternoon of it and packed the van with some friends. Clinging on to the last threads of summer, we visited the beach by Goat Island for a swim and a snorkel. It was a beautiful day in Auckland but as we drove north, the skies turned grey and by the time we’d finished swimming and snorkeling, it was pelting down. Swimming and snorkeling are a surefire way to work up an appetite and with Leigh Sawmill closed until 4pm for set up and every single shop in Leigh closed on a Sunday afternoon, we were forced to drive to Matakana for a munch. Matakana is pretty gourmet as far as small towns go and I realised I’d never been there before. They have a highly rated farmers market which I do hope to visit another time. As we drove down the main …

Sexy French Sausages. Take 2

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I squeezed another meal out of those sexy French snags. More assembling than actual cooking. A huge plate, but the kind of dinner that makes you feel good afterwards. I presented this plate to my husband who for some reason thought it was a shared platter for dinner. He realised his mistake when I brought out a second plate of food for me. One each FTW! Cheese, beans, avocado, cucumber, eggs, spring onion, lemon pepper, cherry tomatoes, rocket and sexy French sausages.

Eating Brunei

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Arriving in Brunei at 7am after a 10 hour flight from Auckland, we were exhausted. We should have given into a few hours nap but with only a day in the tiny sultanate, we foolishly stayed up to be tourists. Nothing was open that early anyway so we hung about the hotel for a couple of hours and had a swim in the pool etc. Really should have taken that nap! Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque. Big, white, gold, in the centre of town. Truly dazzling in the summer sun. Don’t visit without your sunnies! Our first meal was at Food Zone in the shopping complex by the big white mosque in town. Chinese Cuisine can be found here at a fair price. We ordered a Steamed Chicken Set, a Roast Chicken Set (both sets include chicken, chicken rice, pickles, sauces and soup), Sweet & Sour Prawns, Siu Mai (pork dumplings), Ha Gaw (prawn dumplings) and drinks. A measly $24 ($19US) for the lot. Brunei dollar and New Zealand dollar are pretty dollar for dollar, meaning …

We are home.

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It has been an epic 65 days of traveling, eating, drinking, experiencing and adventuring with my husband The Koala. Along the way, we’ve traveled with friends and family, met up with old friends and made new friends. We visited 7 countries and stayed in 18 different places in south east asia. Brunei, Malaysia (Borneo), Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. It’s been exotic and surreal. Being back in front of my mac, in our lounge (looking just the way we left it) it feels like the last 2 months happened to someone else. In the 2 months we’ve been away, I “cooked” only 3 times. A half day cooking class in Chiang Mai, and if you count it as cooking, we had local BBQ where you cook raw ingredients at your table at a restauarant- we did this 2 times (Vang Vieng, Laos and Koh Phangan, Thailand). All other meals – I’m talking an average of 3 meals a day – were eaten out. That’s 192 meals right there! I didn’t photograph every single …

Fake it ’til you make it

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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. …

Finger food lunch

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No utensils required. Chicken nibbles: sugar, soy sauce, salt, pepper, sweet chili sauce, oil. Skewers: mushrooms, tomato, sweet chili sauce, soy sauce, salt, pepper. Baked for 30 minutes in 180°C oven. Served with boiled baby potatoes tossed with butter and fresh herbs from the garden (sage, parsley, rosemary). Simple noms.