Filed under: Uncategorized
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.
Filed under: News
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.
Christmas is over and the New Year is here. The time has flown by and, with relatives visiting and friends popping over, we have had plenty of food to enjoy. Kevin and Tanya joined us for a meal on Christmas Day and here’s what I rustled up for them and the family including my mum and her partner, visiting for the UK.
Beer Can Chicken
Simply one of the best ways to ensure your roast chickens are truly moist and yet have the most flavoursome crispy skin. This is best done cooking with indirect heat on a hooded gas barbecue/grill, though it can be done successfully in a large conventional oven.
2 chickens
2 440ml cans of beer
1 cup home made barbecue rub
Open the beer cans and drink half of each so that both are half empty! Rinse the chicken inside and out and dry thoroughly. From the neck end, use your hand to separate the skin from the breast of the chickens, working all the way down to and over the meat of each leg. Tip ½ of the rub under the skin of each chicken and massage to ensure it is evenly spread over the flesh beneath the skin. Spoon any leftover rub into the opened beer cans. Close off each neck cavity by stretching skin over it and securing with a cocktail stick or two then insert half a lemon to help seal the neck and provide a stopper to prevent the cans poking out. Grease the outside of the cans (to ease removal later) and insert into the cavity of the chicken and spread out the legs to form a tripod. The back leg of the tripod is the beer can. Tuck the wing tips behind the chicken’s back. Place chickens in a large roasting pan to retain juices – I use these to occasionally baste the birds and pour over the carved meat later.
If using a three burner barbecue/grill, preheat the two outer burners and place the pan in the centre over the unlit one. With a two burner, simply preheat the burner on one side and place the tin on the other. I used the warming shelf grill attachment to help stabilise the chickens – though not before spilling one can, as the photo above shows
Cover the grill hood and cook. After 1¼-1 ½ hours (a drumstick will move freely in the joint when done), the skin will be a dark crispy golden brown and the meat is cooked through. Remove the pan from the grill and let the chickens rest for five minutes before carefully removing the cans – preferably with tongs; get help if necessary – and carving as normal.
Home made barbecue rub
This can be absolutely anything that tickles your taste buds – Google provides infinite inspiration or try one of the many pre-made seasoning mixes from the spice section of your local store. From recollection, I included some or all of the following:
Garlic, onion salt, chili powder, black pepper, coriander seeds, turmeric, paprika, rosemary, oregano, parsley, cinnamon and nutmeg.
As I’m sure I have mentioned here before, I like nothing better than spending time with good friends over a long meal and a few drinks and yesterday evening was a great example of this.
The Chairman of the Board is a life-long surfer who press-ganged me into a small band of brothers who make a twice-yearly ritual visits to his surf shack on the Northland’s east coast for surfing, seafood, ales and salty tales. Despite two of these trips and daily chats over coffee, we have never managed to get together with our respective partners until last night.
While the Chairman and our better halves settled down to getting to know each other over drinks on the deck, I rustled up a simple anti pasti of tomato slices topped with bocconcini, avocado and basil leaves, dressed with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic.
After much talk, we moved to the table and settled down to our meal. The primo course was a red pepper soup accompanied by a baby spinach and mushroom salad with a cider vinegar, olive oil and mustard dressing. The secondi was an involtini of chicken served with penne and broccoli.
With dessert, cake and coffee, this little lot took us close to midnight and our friends headed home with a parting request for the recipes below, the plan being, I believe, for the Chairman to extend his cooking portfolio beyond tuatua fritters cooked on a barbecue at the beach.
Red Pepper Soup
This soup is bursting with the best of Provence in the South of France; a combination of garlic, tomatoes, fennel and herbs that provide deep satisfying flavours without being overly rich. In hot weather, try serving it chilled as an alternative to gazpacho.
5 shallots, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
2 red peppers, chopped small
400 ml can choppped tomatoes,
1 tsp fennel seeds, crushed
2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/2 thyme
2 bay leaves
500 ml chicken or vegetable stock
250 ml low-fat creme fraiche
fresh thyme sprig to garnish
In a pan, lightly saute the shallots and garlic in the olive oil until soft, then add the peppers and cook slowly until the peppers are soft. Add the tomatoes, crushed fennel seeds, paprika, herbs and stock to cook over medium-high heat until mixture comes to the boil. Remove from the heat
and allow to stand for 10 minutes. Blitz the soup in a food processor until almost smooth but still having a little texture. Gently whisk in most the low-fat creme fraiche until smooth and return to a low heat to ensure it is warmed through. Serve garnished with a spoonful of the remaining creme fraiche, a sprig of thyme and a sprinkle of paprika.
Involtini di Pollo con Penne e Broccoli
Taking the swordfish involtini recipe in the ‘Aldo Zilli’s Italian Food for Friends’ cookbook, I substituted chicken for swordfish and lengthened the cooking time accordingly. Find a good butcher who can cut and provide you with a crown; that is, the complete breast of large chicken, organic if possible, like the one I used. You can cut this into two breasts and then cut each again lengthways to provide four more than ample portions to work with.
75g fresh white breadcrumbs
40g pecorino or Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
5 green celery leaves, chopped
small handful of lightly toasted pine nuts
salt and freshly ground black pepper
75ml extra virgin olive oil
4 plump chicken breasts
2 or 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary
500g penne pasta
450g broccoli, trimmed and divided into small florets
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
2 fresh red chillies, seeded and sliced or 1 tsp of crushed chillies
grated zest of 1 lemon
celery leaves, to garnish
Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/400°F. Mix together the breadcrumbs, just over half the cheese, the celery leaves, a little salt and 1 tbsp of the oil to form a rough paste. Place the chicken breasts between sheets of greaseproof paper or cling film and pound with a rolling pin to thin and flatten slightly. Remove the paper or film and lay out the four flattened chicken pieces. Divide the crumb and cheese paste equally among the pieces, spreading it out evenly. Roll
up the pieces and secure each roll with a wooden cocktail stick, or butcher’s string if you prefer. Place the rolls on a baking tray with the rosemary sprigs among them and drizzle with olive oil. Roast on a high shelf for 20 minutes, turning to brown evenly half way through. Meanwhile, cook the penne in a large pan of boiling salted water for 10-12 minutes until al dente and drain when done. At the same time, steam or boil the broccoli for 5 minutes until tender and bright green, before draining and refreshing. Gently heat the remaining 3 tbsp of olive oil in large frying pan and add the garlic and chillies. Cook for 1 minute, then add the broccoli and lemon zest. Cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring or tossing frequently. Stir in the pasta and the remaining cheese. Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste before plating. Slice each roll diagonally and place on the pasta. Garnish with fresh celery leaves to
serve.
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.
Filed under: Buzz's Recipes
I had breakfast with a colleague last week at a cafe in one of the posher parts of Auckland. As I’m not a great lover of the ubiquitous Kiwi breakfast of Eggs Benedict, I thought I’d stick with scrambled eggs on toast and I was pleasantly surprised by the cafe’s variation.
A lightly toasted bagel was offered in place of the toast and this came piled high with scrambled eggs and accompanied by a side order of bacon. The well seasoned eggs were pan cooked the old fashioned way, rather than steamed in a jug or zapped in a microwave, in my book a misdemeanor and hanging offense respectively. The tang of the little chunks of feta, along with the saltiness of the bacon, nicely offset the creaminess of the eggs.
After a morning run with the dog and despite the absence of bagels, I whipped up my own version this morning, substituting granary bread and adding a few herbs to flavour things a little more. Eating this in the spring sunshine with a good cup of coffee was a lovely way to start the day.
