All posts tagged: sauce

Coriander Chimichurri

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I am obsessed with polarising flavours and ingredients. “What is your favourite food?” is such a common question but I think, “What is your least favourite food?” is far more interesting. My own list of hated foods have evolved over the years and I imagine yours is ever evolving too. If we were meeting for the first time – making conversation – I might ask you, “What food do you hate?” and you might answer, “Coriander” (or cilantro). Known as coriander in most parts of the world but known as cilantro in Spanish (and in the US). Fresh and leafy, the entire plant: leaves, stem, root and seed are used in cooking. The root and seed taste notably different and should not be substituted in place of the green parts. Probably the most polarising herb in the world, those who dislike it call it foul, soapy or grassy. Those who love it describe it as fresh or citrus-y. I don’t taste citrus but it goes beautifully with lemon and lime IMO. Buy coriander in a …

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 …

Awesomesauce

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Every New Zealand household must stock tomato sauce at all times or risk village ridicule by vegetable flinging and it is without a doubt, our national condiment. In New Zealand, ketchup is tomato sauce. Marinara is what we call pasta sauce. So when a kiwi wants tomato sauce, it’s always the condiment, not the stuff you eat with meatballs and pasta. It calms him The Koala loves tomato sauce more than anyone I know. He can’t eat a pie or steak without it and pasta dishes (even marinara) need tomato sauce applied liberally on top before he can enjoy it. I recently read that tomato sauce calms people. The Koala eats a lot of tomato sauce and he’s pretty calm so I guess it explains a few things. Perhaps I should keep a little bottle of sauce in my bag as “rescue remedy”. I’ve always wanted to try making tomato sauce because I never knew what went into it and we go through a lot of sauce on a regular basis. The recipe This recipe …

Mid-week holiday

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Waitangi Day in the middle the week is freaking AWESOME. I completed 2 of my 10 summer tasks. If we had public holidays on Wednesdays more often, I’d get more shit done. Not burnt out enough to need a full day’s quiet time, not tacked onto a weekend to lead to 2 days of partying plus one of nursing a hangover. Waitangi Day is unofficially considered New Zealand Day and there’s a whole lot of history if you want to get into it, but for most kiwis, it is a public holiday that can be guaranteed to be sunny. My morning was spent nursing a bowl of leftover pasta, attending to emails and blogging while cooking up a batch of tomato sauce. Eager to take it for a test drive, the afternoon was spent with a van-load of friends at Cheltenham Beach. This is our favourite swimming beach at high tide (don’t even bother at low tide). We enjoyed fish and chips with my bottle of home made tomato sauce, a refreshing swim, making sand …