Big Boy’s Brunch

A week ago, SWMBO’s friend flew out from the UK to join us for a week or so before heading off to explore the rest of the country. To give her a real taste of Kiwi summer, we packed the 4×4 and the trailer and headed north ahead of the Friday rush to drive to a great little bach on a secluded East Coast bay.

After a pasta and wine supper at the bach on Friday, we decided to go out to dinner on Saturday night and headed to the restaurant at the Bridge House Lodge in Warkworth, where we had a great meal with The Out-Laws last year.

We were early enough to get a table for seven without booking with the added bonus that we were by the window overlooking the river and I had a great view of the large screen TV showing the Sevens tournament down in Wellington. While restaurants with sports bars can often be noisy and less than pleasant to eat in, the volume of the TV and the good natured cheers were fine and we enjoyed mixing our dinner chat with rooting for the boys in black.

The waiting staff were friendly, helpful and efficient, bringing drinks and garlic bread to settle the sprogs while the three grown ups decided what to have. Being the sole hungry chap among the ladies, I alone ordered a starter - the salt and pepper squid to start - and ended up sharing it with everyone not having an entrée.  Cooked and seasoned well, it was a very nice way to kick off the meal, even if the portion was on the small side even before the vultures descended.

SWMBO liked the look of the spinach salad entrée with feta, olives and roasted peppers and the staff were happy to ‘upgrade’ the dish to a main.  Her friend, the District Nurse, went for the pan-fried chicken with cream cheese farce while I was unable to resist the lure of the venison sausages and chorizo with garlic mashed potato and gravy. The sprogs enjoyed their choices from the children’s menu which included freshly made pizza and fish or chicken & chips.

Each dish was well-presented, served without fuss and in a timely fashion. While I only have the contented murmurs and empty plates of my companions to go on, the spinach salad and the stuffed breast of chicken both got a hearty thumbs-up. The chorizo were packed with spicy paprika and the venison sausages were gamey with a discernible bite lacking in many Kiwi bangers. The garlic mash was lovely and smooth which, with the gravy, made each mouthful slip down that little bit easier.

Desserts were a split with two adults choosing the lemon tart with citrus sorbet and two sprogs voting for the mudcake with chocolate sauce, which they fell on like jackals on a carcass.  I liked the sorbet more than the tart but as I’m not big on desserts and the District Nurse finished hers with much delight, who am I to judge?

More through laziness than anything else, we drank a 2007 Hunter’s Sauvignon Blanc, a long-time award winner from Marlborough, throughout the meal. Light, bright, full of elderflowers and gooseberries, we liked it so much we’ve bought more since.

It’s hard say if this was all value for money as the District Nurse picked up the tab, a very kind and wonderful gesture and much appreciated by all. That said, I’m sure we’ll go back on our own dollar again in the not too distant future.

Iced tea is among my favourite drinks on a hot summer’s day. I’ve often tried to make it by cooling hot brewed tea but only with limited success. I recently came across a cold infused iced tea recipe at The Simple Leaf. As we have no loose leaf tea in the house, I tweaked the recipe a little and found the resulting tea very drinkable and refreshing.

Cold Infused Iced Tea

With cold infused iced tea, you may find granulated or caster sugar doesn’t dissolve very well, so use powdered icing sugar instead.

4 good quality tea bags
1 litre cold water
juice of a lemon
2 tbsps icing sugar, or to taste

Place 4 good quality tea bags in a jug. Add a splash of hot water from a kettle to just wet the tea bags for a minute, pour in a litre of cold water and then remove two of the tea bags. Put the jug in the fridge and leave to infuse for at least 6 hours or overnight if preferred. Remove the tea bags, squeeze the juice of one lemon into the jug and add the sugar if desired. Stir and pour over ice in tall glasses.

Hummus

Our detox handbook mentions ‘a small amount of hummus’ being allowed, so I adapted my usual hummus recipe by roasting the garlic cloves beforehand to soften the flavour and adding a little yoghurt to thin it down. This recipe also lacks the tahini found in most hummus.

300g can chickpeas, well drained
2 cloves garlic, roasted then peeled
½ tsp cayenne pepper
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 lemon, juiced
2 tbsp light raw yoghurt

Place the chickpeas and all other ingredients, except for the yoghurt, in the food processor and process until smooth, adding a little more olive oil if needed to get the preferred consistency. Decant into a bowl and gently mix in the yogurt.

Hot and spicy corn on the cob

Often, I like to barbecue corn cobs in their husks, having previously soaked them in salty water for an hour or two. This not only requires next to no preparation but the charred husk, when peeled back, provides a handy handle to hold the cob by.

½ tsp chili powder
¼ tsp dried oregano
a pinch of onion powder
cayenne pepper to taste
garlic powder to taste
salt and pepper to taste
¼ cup butter or olive oil
2 ears corn, husked and cleaned

Preheat the barbecue plate or grill to a medium-high heat. In a bowl, mix together the chili powder, oregano, onion powder, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Blend in the butter or olive. Apply this mixture to each ear of corn, and place each ear diagonally onto a piece of aluminum foil big enough to wrap the corn. Wrap like a burrito, and twist the ends to close. Place the wrapped corn on the preheated grill and cook 20 to 30 minutes, turning occasionally. It will be just right when it feels tender when poked with a knife or skewer.

Grilled field mushroom with guacamole & zucchini chips

The chips are easily made by diagonally slicing a zucchini, salting the slices to draw out the moisture and then grilling for 3-5 minutes on each side, so as to leave nice lines on each chip.

6 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 small red chillies, finely chopped
2 tbsp mixed herbs
2 large flat mushrooms, stalks removed
salt & ground black pepper, to taste
1 large avocado, peeled & mashed
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp lemon, juiced
2 tbsp light raw yoghurt

Preheat the barbecue plate or grill to a medium-high heat. Combine oil, garlic, chillies & herbs in a small dish and brush over both sides of each mushroom. Season mushrooms with salt & pepper and leave for 5 minutes. Place mushrooms flat-side down first onto the barbecue plate or grill and cook for 3-4 minutes on each side, until tender. Meanwhile, combine the avocado, raw yoghurt, cayenne pepper, lemon juice with salt & pepper in a small bowl and mix well. Place the grilled mushrooms onto plates and carefully top with the guacamole mixture, garnish with the zucchini chips and serve.

The weekend is here and the cleansing continues. The breakfast smoothie was accompanied by 40 more of the cursed capsules. A peppermint tea quickly followed in order to ease the reflux and mild heartburn one gets from trying to wolf such quantities too quickly. This is not the way I usually start the weekend. For me, weekends are about spending time with friends and family and food is almost always involved. With the gorgeous run of hot sunny weather we’re having currently, it is hard not to feel that we are somehow wasting it by not having a barbecue.

After getting up late, I walked to the library to renew a couple of cookbooks, including Matthew Evan’s lovely The Weekend Cook, a title whose irony was not lost on me as I swiped the book out at the excellent ’self-serve’ facility. Stopping in at the pizzeria on the way back to see how Kevin was doing, he was quick to spot that I was out of sorts. “You’re not your usual sparkling self” was his parting shot as I walked away 10 minutes later, unable to enjoy our usual banter about this new ingredient or that great recipe.

The rest of the day was spent reading Per Petterson’s melancholy In The Wake, leafing through the newspaper and diddling about online, grumbling all the while about the boredom of cleansing. Late in the afternoon, I suddenly decided that I wouldn’t be beat and that I’d find something within the limits of the detox regime that I could cook on the barbecue for SWMBO and me.

Forty-five minutes later, I served up grilled field mushroom marinated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and herbs, topped with a light guacamole and cripsy zucchini chips, together with spicy corn of the cob. I plated these up and served them along with a simple salad of cos, spring onions and cherry tomatoes, dressed with olive oil and red wine and a single celery stick filled with a hummus and raw yoghurt mix.

We both enjoyed the meal and reveled in the flavours and textures. The mushroom and guacamole combination, not something I had considered before, worked really well, making me wish I had made two each. The corn was fine if a little too caramelised in places; this was due to an uneven spread of herbs and spices, something that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been able to combine them with butter to coat the corn more evenly - rather than the olive oil I used on this occasion.

For the first time in six days, I really enjoyed preparing and eating a meal and, for a few moments, I even forgot my cravings for freshly baked bread sandwich with a nice juicy steak!

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She Who Must Be Obeyed and I having a bit of a detox and internal cleanse at the moment, in the gap between Christmas visitors and post-New Year visitors. It is the first time we have tried this lark so we sought advice from friends who have done such things and have gone with a product called The Ultimate Cleanse.

The idea is that you prepare for the cleanse over a few days during which you avoid proteins, grains and refined foods. After a couple of days of that, you start taking capsules of four herbal products (anti-inflamatory, high fibre laxative, stimulating laxative and nutritional supplement) while eating meals based on the ‘delicious recipe ideas’ before returning to a normal diet after you’ve finished the capsules.

Though you can spread this programme out over fifty days by taking just 4 capsules twice a day, there’s no way that we can go for a month and a half without bread, pulses, diary products and, in my case, meat. This being so, we decided to go for the ‘power’ cleanse and do whole the thing in 8-10 days. It was only on the fourth morning, when I broke the seal on the containers of capsules, that it dawned on the ‘power’ cleanse option means chugging between 32 and 40 capsules morning and night! Ho hum.

So, for the last five days, breakfasts have been fruit smoothies and lunch and dinner a rotation of vegetable soups and salads. Snacks are made up of fresh or dried fruit or, well, more vegetables. I have to say that I am finding the restrictions of the required diet trying; no doubt, the lack of stimulants like caffeine and alcohol play their part in this.

However, in the spirit of the venture, we are trying to find new ways to make the allowed foods interesting. Tonight, I made a dish consisting of a bed of cos lettuce, covered with a Roma tomato and onion salad, topped with sliced avocados. I served this with a yoghurt dressing I whipped up to add some contrast and zing to the salad.

I really miss the texture of freshly baked ciabatta, the snap of a sausage against my teeth and the aroma of coffee so, with the weekend without the distractions of work just hours away, it remains to be seen whether I can go another five days without them.

Yoghurt Dressing

As with most things, this can be adapted to suit your taste and the components of the salad. Dill would work well with smoked mackerel or paprika or cayenne pepper with chicken. Alternatively, try roasted garlic to soften the flavour. You can adjust the consistency too; thicker for tossing in a bowl or thinner to drizzle over plated salad.

½ cup organic raw yoghurt
½ lemon, squeezed to juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp chopped fresh lemon basil
1 tsp chopped fresh mint
½ tsp cumin
pepper
salt

Combined all ingredients in a bowl or jug and mix thoroughly with a spoon.

After the Friday night rush at Dante’s, Kevin sent me a text offering free beer and a chat while they cleaned up and prepared dough for the next day. After the kitchen duties were over, Kevin offered me a free pizza if I made it myself, so I set to and, under his instruction, worked the dough into a nice late night snack.

While we were eating, we ended up talking about chef’s knives, as I had been rambling on about reading Anthony Bourdain’s description of essential kitchen tools in his great book, Kitchen Confidential. In the book, Bourdain suggests readers to replace the four or five kitchen knives they use with a single Global chef’s knife. I have long wanted one of Yoshikin’s knives in my kitchen but, costing the thick end of NZ$200, a Global knife has never a priority in the household budget. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t look for a next-best option.

While mooching around at the beach over the weekend, I had a wander through the local shops. In a New Year’s sale at a kitchenware shop, I spent some time looking at a selection of decent kitchen knives before settling on a Scanpan santuko knife. It is nicely balanced, easy on the eye and sharper than a sharp thing. This is just as well as the adults in the house have begun a 10 day ‘detox and cleanse’ regime today, so there’ll be much chopping of vegetables and slicing of fruits in the next week or so.

Pissaladina

Over the holidays, I have read a number of great food books borrowed from the local library. These include the delightful Rosemary and Bitter Oranges, kitchen memories and recipes of a Tuscan childhood and brilliant The Man Who Ate Everything by lawyer/foodie Jeffrey Steingarten.

As usual when making food for family and friends, I have found a good deal of inspiration from my collection of Italian cookbooks. As Italian food rarely fails to please both the stomach and the eyes, here’s a few of the dishes I made with the odd photo for good measure.

Pissaladina

Inspired by ‘A Book of Mediterranean Food’ by the incomparable Elizabeth David of which I have a cherished 1960 paperback copy in which she writes the following

‘…across the Italian border, these dishes baked on bread dough are called pizza, which simply means a pie, and there are many variations of them, the best known being the Neapolitan pizza which consists of tomatoes, anchovies, and mozzarella cheese (a white buffalo/milk cheese). The local pizza of San Remo is very like the Provencal pissaladiere, but garnished with salted sardines instead of anchovies; it is known locally as sardenara.’

Writing in bleak post-war Britain, David advised getting unbaked dough from a local baker. Although I could ask Kevin for some of his, I usually make dough for my pizze, focacce and ciabatte to the superb recipes in Suzanne Dunaway’s No Need To Knead - Hand Made Italian Breads in 90 Minutes.

1kg onions, sliced
pizza or Italian bread dough
Black olives, stoned
Anchovy fillets
Olive oil

Roll out or hand stretch the dough to fit a large baking sheet or pizza stone. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with olive oil and add the sliced onions. Over a gentle heat, slowly cook the onions until almost to a puree - this will take around 40 minutes. Pour the puree on to the dough, put on the top and decorate it with stoned black olives and criss-cross with anchovy fillets. Bake in the oven, on the pre-heated stone or sheet as you would a pizza, until golden brown.

Salsa di pomodoro (l) and pissaladina onions (r) in the making

Salsa di Pomodoro d’Emilia

Emilia’s tomato sauce from ‘Rosemary and Bitter Oranges’ by Patrizia Chen. Emilia, the cook in Chen’s childhood home, would sometimes vary the recipe on a whim, adding a little rosemary or red wine to this classic sauce.

1 onion
1 carrot
1 clove garlic
½ stick celery
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
400g / 14oz can crushed or chopped tomatoes
Pinch of dried red pepper or chilli flakes (optional)
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Finely chop the onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Saute the vegetables in the olive oil in a medium saucepan over a low heat for about 5 minutes, or until they begin to soften, stirring. Stir the tomatoes into the vegetables. For a little heat, add some red pepper or chilli flakes. Simmer gently for 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is thick and flavourful. Season with salt and pepper.

Orecchiette Piccante

Orecchiette Piccante

From Antonio Carluccio’s Passion for Pasta. Antonio Carluccio is possibly the best champion of Italian food, certainly in the UK. His books and television appearances ooze with passion and excitement about great food. I made my own orecchiette by mixing 1lb of flour and five eggs with the dough hook of my Kenwood chef for 3-4 minutes, then wrapping in plastic wrap and resting the dough in the fridge for an hour. I then simply rolled out lots of ½cm thick strings and cut these into little 1cm lengths before flattening each with a thumb to make the individual orecchiette or ‘ears’, using a little flour to stop things getting too sticky.

4 oz / 100g sun-dried tomatoes in oil
4 anchovy fillets, in oil
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped basil
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped parsley
¼ oz / 10g capers 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 small chilli pepper
1 oz / 25g stoned black olives
6 tablespoons virgin olive oil
½ pint / 300ml water
12 oz / 350g dried orecchiette
2 oz / 50g freshly grated Pecorino cheese

Drain the tomatoes and puree them in a food processor with 2 tablespoons each of the basil and parsley, the anchovies, capers, garlic, chilli pepper, olives, olive oil and water, until the mixture is smooth and glossy. Cook the pasta for 20-25 minutes, or until al dente. Meanwhile, gently simmer the tomato mixture in a pan for 5 minutes, adding a little more water if becoming too thick. Drain the pasta and mix with the sauce. Add the Pecorino cheese, mix together well and serve with the remaining basil and parsley sprinkled on top.

Minestrone

Also from Antonio Carluccio’s Passion for Pasta. Minestrone recipes vary from region to region depending on which ingredients are in season or available. For this vegetarian version - no bacon or ham - I adapted things a little further by substituting a tin or four bean mix for the borlotti beans and adding a little more pasta. These tweaks nudged the recipe to somewhere between minestrone and pasta e fagioli but that’s what I like to do; take a recipe as a starting point, not a prescription.

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 small clove garlic, peeled and chopped
4 celery sticks, diced
1 tomato, peeled, de-seeded and finely chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
A few leaves of fresh basil
1½ pints / 900 ml chicken stock
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 x 13 oz / 375g tin four bean mix, drained
5 oz / 110g dried tubettini
3 oz / 75g freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Heat the oil and fry the onion and garlic until the onion is soft. Add the remaining vegetables and the basil and toss well with the oil. Add the stock and bring to the boil. Cook for 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste and stir in the beans and the pasta. Cook for about 10 minutes, or until the pasta is al dente. Serve hot sprinkled with the Parmesan cheese.

Auckland is pretty empty this week with many folks out of town on their summer break.  With so many people away, many of the cafes and restaurants are also closed with their owners also taking the opportunity to take a well-earned break.

Having breakfasted early on a coffee and doughnut, completed my morning’s work and then gone for a 4k run, I was more than ready for lunch and thought I might drive a few blocks over for lunch in Dominion Road, the longest straight road in Auckland and home to pretty much every type of eatery there is. 

With a bowl of noodle soup in mind, I called SWMBO who was in town with the two youngest and suggested we meet for lunch.  However, it soon became clear that many of the Chinese restaurants were closed and instead we walked into Super Pollo, a Peruvian cafe specialising in charcoal-roasted chicken.  The menu centres around various dishes made from Peruvian spice-marinated chicken cooked on a spit over a charcoal fire accompanied by rice, cooked with herbs and vegetables, fried kumara, corn cobs and fresh salads.  Other options include charcoal chicken burgers, chorizo, charcoal grilled lamb and other traditional Peruvian meals.  To complete the Peruvian experience, there’s chicha morada, a traditional Peruvian drink or Inca Kola, a famous soft drink imported from Peru.

Between us, we tried the chicken and chips, chicken tortillas wrap with salad and mayo and roast chorizo with lettuce, tomato and cucumber salad.  Each of these were freshly cooked and very enjoyable, though the tortilla wraps were a little on the small side (compared to the photos in the menu).  The chicken portion was well-cooked with a deep dark skin full of flavour.  The fries, which I believe were twice-fired like all great fries, had a satisfying crispness and were declared to be the best in New Zealand by the fussiest of our daughters.  The chorizo had the rich taste of paprika-spiced pork and the plain and simple, dressed with a little salad cream or mayo, was fresh and plentiful.

With four of us admittedly sharing a bottle of Coke, this tasty and satisfying meal cost us about $7.50 a head, about the same as one might expect to pay at a certain fast food chain that serves chicken that none of us would eat.  I’ll definitely be eating at Super Pollo again; next week, in fact, as I’ve just invited my management team for a lunch there to start the New Year.