All posts tagged: Recipes

Duck Liver, Cognac and Sage Pâté

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This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event to encourage us to try new food related things. Leah from Sharing The Food We Love is the host for this month’s event. If you have a blog and you are eating or cooking something new this month, click below to join. ‘Gnac Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone! It’s a great season for eating and drinking. Let’s begin with a little shout out to Cognac. The Koala and I have been enjoying Cognac since winter. At 40% alc/vol it’s a serious tipple but goes down smooth as silk. I also love how low maintenance it is. Just pour and enjoy. No ice, no mixer, no fluff and cheaper than I would have guessed. With Cognac in the house, I wanted to do something else with it this month and perusing my foodie bucket list, I found just the thing. Years ago, I was a little obsessed with liver after I read about the super rat science experiment: “A group of scientists that have been …

Hannibal Buress got me into pickle juice

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The Koala and I laugh about pickle juice. Probably too much. To find out why, watch this bit from funny man Hannibal Buress. It’s gold. The Koala is addicted to pickles so we also have an abundance of pickle juice in this house. We usually throw it out. Cooking with pickle juice wouldn’t be part of my radar but the seed was sown. Hannibal Buress made me experiment with pickle juice. I hope he likes this recipe! It ain’t swordfish but the salmon market is pretty stable. 😉 Note: recipe may vary as pickle juice is a man-made product and comes in all manners of strengths. I found ours  mild  with a little sweetness and delicately flavoured the fish. I felt that could have done with a little more oomph but The Koala thought the flavour was just right. I served this with pumpkin mash and some rainbow silverbeet (rainbow chard) for colour. There’s something fun about a widly colourful all-natural plate of food. But if you want to be a bit more subdued, rice …

The Koala’s Taters

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The aioli I made today paired wonderfully with hot smoked salmon, roast broccoli spears and The Koala’s special potatoes. Our kitchen is mostly my domain, but The Koala has a few recipes up his sleeve, one of them being these fried potatoes. These potatoes are easy to make and uses very few ingredients. We usually have these with steak or fish and the crunchy outer gives way to a fluffy interior. Koala’s Taters (The Koala’s special recipe) Serves 2 Ingredients 3 medium potatoes 1 cup cooking oil Salt Preparation In a medium saucepan, bring 1 litre of water to the boil. Peel the potatoes, leaving whole. Once water is boiled, add potatoes and cook for 15 minutes. Drain potatoes and once cool enough to handle, cut into 1.5 to 2cm (about 3/4″) thick slices. Heat 1 cup cooking oil in a deep skillet or a saute pan. Once oil is hot, using tongs carefully add potato slices to the oil in a single layer. Fry for 10-15 minutes until golden, turning once. Remove potato slices …

Make Aioli

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This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event to encourage us to try new food related things. Marnelli from Sweets & Brains is the host for month’s event. If you have a blog and have cooked, eaten or experienced a new food this month, come and join this event.  The science of cooking both frightens and fascinated me. I cook by taste, touch and feel. A bit of this, a bit of that and dinner magically appears. When science is involved, I have to throw intuition out the window and follow a recipe. It doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve failed and conquered hollandaise sauce and decided to tackle item number 70 on my foodie bucket list: make aioli. Both hollandaise and aioli are emulsions which means they are a mixture of two or more liquids that normally do not mix. Egg yolk and a good beating quickly fixes this. Some vigorous whisking is required for this recipe and requires your full attention for a short time. You could make use of a spare …

More Herbs, Less Salt Day

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August 29 is officially More Herbs, Less Salt Day. I adore herbs and I wish I’d done a herb garden instead of our vegetable garden. I suppose it’s still not too late for that. I’ve grown rosemary, mint, coriander, basil, parsley, sage, tarragon and thyme. They’re all pretty sad looking at the moment, but hopefully this spring will give them magic beanstalk powers. My favourite herb is coriander and I can eat that stuff like spinach. The Koala loathes it though so I don’t cook with it but rather, dump it on top of my own plate as a garnish. Luckily it’s the kind of herb that works fine for that. What is your favourite herb? Are there any herbs you dislike? In honour of More Herbs, Less Salt Day, here are five of my favourite herb-filled recipes. All of these are particularly simple to prepare. Just click in the images below to be redirected to the recipes. Enjoy!

Stinky horizons

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I’ve met a some friendly, slightly unhinged goats in my life. I have a fondness and respect for them. Pictured above is a friendly nannie goat and I at a friend’s family farm. Good times. But I have always been terrified of goats cheese. It is too pungent for my taste and if you are Chinese, you may know the word “Soh”. “Soh” refers to a despised goat/sheep smell, not exactly endearing. A couple of years ago, I realised that goats cheese was tolerable as an ingredient. Like any pungent food, like anchovies, fish sauce, even garlic, on their own, they can be overwhelming – but paired with other, gentler foods, they can be wonderful. I mean, I love using fish sauce but I wouldn’t knock back a shot of Golden Boy’s smelly brew. Always looking to expand my growing edge, to broaden my stinky horizons, I decided to take the beaded lady by the horns and cook something with goats cheese for the first time. No stock risotto I’ve opened Pandora’s box and it …

The Honesty Box Menu 2

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Another well thought-out box from The Honesty Box. This is what our 11kg of produce is being turned into this week. The Honesty Box Menu 2 Items in bold are from The Honesty Box Porterhouse steak with The Koala’s fried potatoes and broccoli with cheese sauce Creamy scrambled eggs with spinach, garlic, thyme, onion with Swiss-style cheese on toast Deviled sausages with onion, kiwifruit and apple. Served on potato pumpkin mash with steamed broccoli Beetroot and Chevre (soft goats cheese) risotto with fresh thyme and lemon slice (pictured) Pumpkin and rosemary soup with soft buttered bread rolls Spicy chicken nibbles with pumpkin and rosemary wedges Braised beef, carrot and beetroot with star anise, cinnamon and soy. Served on rice Smoked salmon and spinach fettuccine with garlic parmesan butter sauce Cheeseburgers with beef patties, red onion, beetroot, avocado and wasabi mayo Sangria (with fruit)

Slow Cooked Orange Pulled Pork (with crackling)

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We are hoarding oranges. We don’t eat oranges, but they keep turning up, hence the collection. I have good intentions, I mean to eat them, which is why I haven’t cancelled or blacklisted oranges. If we had a juicer we might get through what we we receive from our boxes. Therefore, the next best thing is to use orange as an ingredient. Luckily, we love our meat with fruit in this house and The Koala was eager for me to test out another pulled pork on him. I used a boneless pork shoulder for my Hoisin pulled pork recipe but this version uses one with bone in as it was cheaper this week. Feel free to use either. I am loving our first winter living with a slow cooker. A hand-me-down from Mum, it’s worth the extra space it takes up on our counter. To save on time and dishes, I used the ceramic pot and lid from our slow cooker to marinade in. This requires substantial fridge space so if you don’t have this, …

The Honest Box Menu 1

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Since the success of my first pulled pork, I’m doing another twice the size this week with plenty of leftovers to play with. The Koala does not mind one bit! This week we received a whole pumpkin from our F&V small box from The Honesty Box. Sharing a 2.4kg pumpkin between two means  it features heavily in this week’s menu. I’m not a fan of pumpkin but I know what I like and as long as it’s cooked with plenty of aromatic spices I’m good to go. The pouch of herbs will be thrown willy nilly into soups and stews. The Honesty Box Menu 1 Items in bold are from The Honesty Box. Orange pulled pork with smashed garlic, onion and bay leaves Pulled pork rolls with lettuce, red onion and sour cream Pulled Pork Tortillas (see notes below) Rice noodles with pulled pork and broccoli Spiced Pumpkin and kumara soup with smoked cheddar toasties Pumpkin and chickpea curry with garlic, onion and tomato paste. Served on rice with a dollop of sour cream Sirloin steak medium rare …

Hoisin Pulled Pork

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The Koala asked me if I had any plans for the weekend. I replied “pulled pork” which he thought it was code and I that was feeling frisky. To be fair, he wasn’t disappointed with what I had in mind. I frequent blogs and forums with US inhabitants and I often suffer from major food envy. Pulled pork has been the object of my affection. Pulled pork is not a common dish in New Zealand though this is slowly changing. There are American-Mexican joints in Auckland now who all serve slow cooked pork in tortillas. This recipe is incredibly easy to make and could be doubled or even tripled if you are feeding a larger group. This recipe fed five adults for dinner but judging by how quickly it disappeared, it would be better suited for four. Pork has this annoying habit of shrinking which is a good reason to buy slightly more than you think you need. No one ever complained about pulled pork leftovers! Hoisin means “seafood” I added a Chinese touch by …

NATURALLY ORGANIC MENU 3

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We didn’t receive a lot of vegetables in our Naturally Organic this week so our meal plan reflects this. Hope to stretch a few meals so we can have leftovers for lunch but it might not happen. Plenty of fruit to snack on this week though! Naturally Organic Menu 3 Items in bold are from our Naturally Organic box. Hoisin pulled pork with apple slaw on floury baps (pictured) Chicken and leek soup with garlic butter toast Bangers and mash with kiwi caramalised onions (see recipe below) with sautéed garlic silverbeet Spicy udon with beef, onion, egg and cabbage, topped with pinenuts Pumpkin and silverbeet curry with home made roti Orange roasted chicken drumsticks with pumpkin and carrot Apple hand pies with butterscotch sauce and ice cream Butterscotch and banana smoothie I’d like to share a quickie recipe with you that I whip out for bangers and mash occasions. Call it a lazyman’s chutney. It’s chunky and delicious. The flavours of caramalised onion, kiwi and butter work really well together and this would be great with steak, sausages, chops or chicken. This …

Smoked Salmon and Urenika

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If you like colourful, accessible food, this one is for you. This recipes shows off the lovely purple Urenika potato but you can substitute any good quality potato and the flavours will be the similar. Coloured potatoes contrast beautifully with smoked salmon and lemon so if you can, opt for colour potatoes. The deep purple Urenika or Maori potato is precious here in New Zealand. They are pretty boring looking the outside, and their secret is within. The small knobbly spuds can be found at most farmers markets but are absent from supermarket chains and as there is no mass farming of these potatoes. It’s as shame as they are quite beautiful to look at and taste earthy. I guess their rarity makes them more special. I’ve heard these potatoes can be quite easy to grow. In any case, at the end of summer, I poked a few sprouting potatoes into a planter box. The tomatoes were finished so I figured I had nothing to lose. A plant that looked liked nightshade sprouted up and …

Make Risotto

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I go weak in the knees for smoked salmon risotto. If it’s on the menu at a restaurant, it is what I’m going to order. Still, I always did feel a little naive paying $20 for a rice dish. After I ordered some Aoraki Hot Smoked Salmon from Naturally Organic, I figured it was finally time to attempt risotto. I used the stainless steel sauté pan that Mum gave me and it was perfect for the job. You need something with decent sides but also plenty room for the rice to absorb liquid in. While it might be possible to use a skillet, you would have to be extra careful while stirring. In hindsight, I could have added a little more stock at the end. While the rice was cooked, it absorbed even more liquid on standing. Some sources say to stop just before the rice is cooked. Once upon a time, you could only get cold smoked salmon but now you can find both in equal abundance. I prefer hot smoked salmon but I …

The Shanghai Chicken Project

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The premise I’ve followed the blog Sybaritica for a while and I enjoy John’s experimental and honest love of Asian cuisine. It was there I found out about The Shanghai Chicken Project and his buddy Stefan’s Gourmet Blog. The Shanghai Chicken Project is based on a mysterious chili chicken dish of dubious origin with pine nuts and broccoli leaves. If you have been following my blog for a while, you’ll know I love a good foodie challenge. I also happened to have some premium New Zealand pine nuts and a fermented chili paste I was hoping to play with so it like it was meant to be. The Shanghai Chicken Project rules: Prepare a dish inspired by Bamboo Restaurant’s Shanghai Chicken. It has to include chicken, chiles of some sort, vegetable greens, and nuts. It could be a known recipe or one of your own — traditional or newly invented. Blog about your dish or send Stefan photos and a description of what you did. Lee Kum Kee’s Chili bean sauce (Toban Djan) Toban Djan …

One pot wonder: Chorizo and Prawn Rice

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This is a great one pot wonder. Warming, with a little kick and full of flavour. Fresh chorizo sausages are popping up everywhere. Unlike the traditional chorizo which is firm and cured, fresh chorizo look like regular snags, filled with soft sausage-meat and must be cooked thoroughly. Similar to paella rice or claypot chicken, the prize in this dish is the tasty hard cooked rice at the bottom of the pan. Still delicious even as leftovers the next day. I used a stainless steel pan for this job. Avoid using a non-stick pan so that you can scrape those tasty bits to your hearts content. I happened to have saffron needing to be used up but I’m sure you could make this dish without it. Saffron isn’t exactly an economical ingredient. One Pot Wonder: Chorizo and Prawn Rice  Serves 4 Ingredients 4 chorizo sausages (500grams/1lb) 250g peeled prawns (1/2lb) 1 tablespoon capers 2 cups rice, rinsed and drained (used a mixture of red rice and white rice) 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 onion, diced 3 cups …

Slow Cooked Bœuf Bourguignon

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This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event to encourage us to try new food related things. Sonya from And More Food is the host for month’s event. If you have a blog and have tried something new with food this month, come and join this event. Mother’s Day is a popular day for eating out, because mothers generally get a holiday from kitchen duties. Interestingly, the Entertainment Book is invalid on Mother’s Day, but not Father’s Day (which is traditionally a popular day for eating in). With my sister and her boyfriend currently eating their way through Turkey, this is the first time where I get to play only child. Being more confident in the kitchen, I offered to cook for Mum. Now, I never thought I had a tiger mother, but maybe I was wrong. For Mother’s Day, Mum requested Julia Child’s Bœuf Bourguignon! I had never made this dish before and I was also using a slow cooker for the first time. A perfect candidate for Our Growing Edge this month. This slow …

Tomato Soup

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It’s been raining all weekend and we spent a hungover day holed up at home, wrapped in blankets, watching movies and feeling pathetic. It’s not super cold yet, but when you are feeling fragile, comfort is priority. Soup and grilled cheese sandwiches was just the ticket – pretty easy to make and to eat. I always have canned tomatoes in the pantry. I buy 3 to 4 cans at a time because one brand or another will have a special deal on. Canned tomatoes are a handy base for pasta dishes, nachos, stews and more recently, tomato soup. In terms of equipment, you really need 1 large saucepan and a stick blender. You can use a regular blender if that’s all you have. I would use 1/2 a cup of milk minimum. If you’re prefer a bit more milk or even full fat cream, go for it! Tomato Soup Serves 4 Ingredients 1 tablespoon cooking oil 1 onion 1 clove garlic 2 cans of canned whole or diced tomatoes (400 grams/14.5oz each) 1 can of …

Simple Hash Browns

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Who thought that something so simple would be so popular? I cooked this for The Koala on the weekend and shared a photo on this blog and the response was overwhelming. So here is my recipe. Easy enough for a man or a child accomplice…or a man-child accomplice. This recipe made two large hash browns, but you could easily divide it into four thinner hash brown, just do not cook as long. Simple Hash browns Makes 2   Ingredients 3 medium potatoes 1 free range egg Pinch of paprika Generous grind of sea salt Dried or fresh herbs of your choice (chopped) 1 tablespoon oil Preparation  Peel potatoes and grate. A handful at a time, squeeze all the liquid from the potatoes, discarding the liquid (I do this over the sink) and put squeezed potato into a mixing bowl. Add the egg, paprika, salt and herbs. Mix well. Leave for 10 minutes. More liquid will be expelled. Squeeze liquid from potatoes again, discarding the liquid. Divide the mixture into two and in your hands, press …

Autumn is the best.

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Autumn is the best. I relish the crisp air, warm scarves and feijoa laden trees. Green leaves turn to red. Red wine replaces cold beer. Comfort food replaces chilled food. I’ve been feeling a little run down this week and my clothes have been feeling a little taut. You know, when your skinny jeans feel a tad too skinny and you worry what might happen to the shape of your middle when you attempt to sit down. I’m sure it is just the change of season and I’ll accuse daylight savings of lighting trickery. Before we dive into comfort food territory, I think it’s a good opportunity to revisit some of my favourite blog recipes. Light and bright food porn to tickle your fancy. For those heading into spring, this should be good inspirational fodder for you too. All thumbnails jump to relevant posts.

Chinese Tea Eggs

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When I was a little girl, I knew that every now and then, a magical pot of tea eggs could be found steeping in the fridge. We used to eat these yummy, beautifully marbled eggs as a tasty snack. I never really thought about where they came from or how they were made. Tea eggs or “cha yeep dahn” in Cantonese literally translates to “tea leaf egg”, is a traditional Chinese snack and big metal tubs of tea eggs can be found all over China by way of street venders and market stalls. Easily portable, pre-cracked and already wrapped in a natural casing, tea eggs are a wonderful whole food. The yolks have the grey outer due to being cooked for a time but this in no way affects the flavour. Tea eggs can be eaten hot, warm, at room temperature or cold. If you prefer cold or hot boiled eggs, then proceed as per your preference. Chinese tea eggs taste mildly salty-sweet, aromatic like aniseed with a good dose of “egginess” of course. Now that …