An old Prussian recipe for aromatic veal, pork, anchovy meatballs simmered in a tart caper broth which is then turned into a sauce with the addition of herbs and sour cream. The meatballs buck our contemporary obsession with frying everything and are deliciously succulent as a result. The broth self-thickens from the flour the meat…
Category: food
Food : Pork Pie
There is something glorious about the simplicity of traditional pork pie. In effect it has two ingredients , the produce of a pig and wheat flour. We can allow ourselves a few spices , and a torn herb leaf or two, perhaps a few stock veg for the jelly but really it is the triumph…
Food : Spiced Lettuce Soup
Lettuce soup is a surprisingly divisive dish. There is something about taking a green we eat raw and cooking it that really upsets people. The reality is that like spinach, lettuce can work in both raw and cooked applications . I have a few old NZ cookbooks that feature recipes for lettuce soup and with…
Food : Home Washed Rind Cheese
While I don’t make cheese at home anymore , or indeed monger it for a living anymore , I do subvert it every now and then for fun. I love the funky, tangy, expressively fermented world of washed rind cheese. Washed rind cheese or, smear ripened to use the technical term, is a family of…
Food : Tomato Kasundi
This year I had a decent tomato harvest allowing me to make sauces and chutneys. Tomato Kasundi combines 2 of my favourite things , preservation by pickling or fermentation and the flavours of the Indian sub-continent . Kasundi is a chutney that comes in a number of forms but outside of the Indian community is…
The Year of the Garden
This year I have put a lot of effort into my veg garden. As the pandemic rages on, the world teeters on the edge of another world war and far right conspiracy theorists attempt sedition an hour down the road the garden seems like a good place to hide. New raised beds and lots of new…
Food : Crispy Tofu and Soba Noodle and Black Bean Salad
This pan Asian / fusion / café culture salad is very much my jam in the warmer months. In part inspired by the awesome Soba Noodle salad at Maranui/Queen Sallys with the addition of crispy tofu in a Korean bulgogi sauce . The deep fryer really helps the crispy tofu but I’m sure an air…
Food : Stuffed Roast Brisket
Some of the saddest words in the English language are “roast chicken”. Roast dinners are important to me. They are an important part of my culture, both English and Pakeha. A Sunday roast is a common occurrence even when Im the only one at the dining table. They are an important meal of my childhood,…
Food : Carbonnade de Gibier
The great pestilence has caused me to up my online purchasing. I recently discovered that Premium Game have a webstore. I used to enjoy cooking with wild meats when I lived in town and could source them from Moore Wilsons. Finding I can get deliveries of game to my door is a bit of a…
Food : Waterzooi Sint-Jakobsschelpen
I have been in a real Belgian beer and food mood recently. On the food front the turning seasons have favoured the hearty yet delicate flavours and on the beer front I increasingly have lost any enthusiasm for new world hops and now drink mainly traditional English Belgian and German beer. If I were out…
Raise the Dawn 