Today is Labour Day here in New Zealand and, wouldn’t you know it, the sky is overcast and no-one wants to do more than lounge around the house. We plan to have friends over for a roadt dinner later but, with bored kids and wife to feed, I needed to sort lunch in double quick time. A quick search of the web and a minute in the pantry was all it took to come up with following recipe – straight forward, no-fuss food that was easy to make and nice to eat.
Onion Pasta
By slowly cooking the onion until it starts to caramelise and then adding the stock and seasoning mix, the onions take on a sweetness that’ll win over the harshest onion critic. I know this because one of my daughters is anti-onion and she ate this dish with no complaints.
2 thinly sliced sliced onions
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp dried basil
1 cup chicken stock, or 1 tsp stock powder in water
1 pinch ground black pepper
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of powdered garlic
500g pasta of choice
Warm the stock, add the basil, pepper, salt and garlic powder, stir and leave. In your largest frying pan or skillet, heat the oil, butter and cook the sliced onions until they take on a golden brown colour. Add the prepared stock and seasoning mix, reducing the liquid over a medium heat for 10 minutes, adding a little more stock to keep moist if required. Drain the pasta and toss with the onion mixture thoroughly and serve. To help folks dress the pasta to their liking, I served side dishes of grated cheddar and blue cheese, roasted pine nuts and freshly torn basil leaves.
A tweaked version of Onion Pasta @ Allrecipes
In the last few weeks, we have been investing some time and money in preparing for the summer to come. While our dining room has a lovely long dark wood table and six sturdy high backed chairs, last summer’s outdoor meals were eaten squashed around a small and flimsy plastic garden table with a mish-mash of chairs.
We recently discovered a great discount furniture store that sells slight seconds and bought a lovely mix of pieces from the Nullabor range. After much debate, we settled for a large square table, four canvas-slung chairs and two three seater benches. As a family of six who like company, this combination will cater for most of our needs – right up to seating ten for Sunday roast when our friends Stuart and Sarah visit fly in with their two kids next Easter.
Earlier today, to make sure that we don’t roast under the harsh UV rays, I installed a basic balanced cantilever frame to hold a square shade sail over the table area. Once I have the design refined and finalised, I plan to build a demountable frame that can be removed during the winter months.
A new barbecue would complete our deck makeover but, just as I settled down at the table with a cup of tea and a few catalogues, the sun disappeared and the wind picked up, so that’ll have to wait for another day.
Other than family and friends, British beers are amongst the few things I truly miss about living in England. Tonight I went along along to British beer tasting at Chris Carrad’s Wine Circle store in Huapai that was billed as ‘tour England for less than $3,000′.
The tasting was overseen by Albrecht, a 2nd generation brew master from Germany who has brewed all over the world. Over an hour and a half, Chris and Albrecht took the assembled group, including a few local brewers, through a tasting of twelve beers from Britain and Ireland, commenting on flavours, brewing techniques and the odd bit of social history. For the record, the beers were Badger’s Tanglefoot, Badger’s Golden Champion, IBS Hazy Days, Thwaites Bomber, Theakston’s Old Peculiar, O’Hanlon’s Port Stout, Wadsworth’s 6X, Fullers 1845, Fullers London Pride, Wytchwood Black Wytch, Mollings Celtic Ale and Belhave Twisted Thistle IPA.
All were worth tasting but the Twisted Thistle, O’Hanlon’s Port Stout and Fullers 1845 all made a particular impression, as did the Brakespear bottle conditioned organic beer I bought on the off-chance to enjoy afterwards. My rudimentary tasting notes, such as they are, are on Flickr here with notes to help decypher the scrawl.
