All posts tagged: sausages

Tasty hot dogs and a meaty giveaway

L’Authentique (law-thon-teek) is a small local charcuterie run by Frenchmen. Charcuterie (sha-koo-ta-ree) is the culinary art of turning meat (mostly pork) into delicious things such as sausage, bacon, ham, terrines and pates. Known primarily for their handmade sausages, I love L’Authentique’s gluten free, dairy free and free range meat products. There are no fillers here and definitely no carcinogens (for those who worry about recent food headlines). The Koala and I have been eating lots of L’Authentique sausages this year. We tried the whole range of sausages so far and they are great to serve up at home or to take to a barbecue where you want to impress. I’ve yet to meet a sausage lover who doesn’t fall in love with L’Authentique sausages. Summer collaboration L’Authentique have just released two summer sausages for the Kiwi barbecue. In collaboration with Javier Carmona, Executive Chef at Orleans, a hot and smokey Louisiana Andouille (ahn-DOO-eee) sausage that comes in a 4 pack; and in collaboration with Hallertau Brewery, the Asian-inspired Peking Maximus which is made with Hallertau Maximus …

Lamb Sausages and Grapes

Lamb is getting cheaper and cheaper here in NZ and I suspect it’s to do with our strong kiwi dollar. A lot of the lamb raised here gets shipped off to overseas markets so it’s a treat to be able to afford it. Still, if you don’t want the commitment of a whole lamb leg, lamb sausages are a cheap and tasty way to eat lamb. Nosh Food Market usually put a different sausage on special each week and last week was their really good lamb sausages for $11 kg. Nosh’s Black Rock Butchery are surprisingly good and their specials are very good and it’s no small feat that Nosh recently won the NZ Ham of the Year prize at the annual 100% Bacon and Ham competition. At Nosh, you can ask the butcher real foodie questions, like portion sizes and their cooking reccomendations. A stark contrast to the supermarket where I once asked the lady behind the seafood counter if they had any flounder left (on special that week). She did not know what …

We don’t have feijoas coming out our ears.

Really we don’t. Our tree is giving us a respectable 3 to 6 fruit a day. Totally manageable. This week, I learned that feijoas (pronounced fee-jo-ahs) thrive in our sub tropical climate and also don’t have any natural pests here. Every day, I check the lawn under and gather up any fallen fruit. Although Tofu doesn’t seem to be interested in feijoa this autumn, he could just be trying to trick me into nonchalance. I’ve caught him hoeing into them in other years so I’m not so easily fooled. I’m still squirreling away all the macadamia nuts that are dropping onto our lawn. I haven’t bought a macadamia nut cracker yet so I’m just collecting and collecting. The only way I can get them open right now is using a brick and smashing the nuts on concrete. But it’s not pretty and kind of caveman like to be honest. I hope my neighbours don’t see me smashing bricks and nuts in the backyard…and eating the results. The nuts have a great flavour, but aren’t crunchy. I’ve already …