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April 29, 2005

The simplest supper

The other night I was trying to take the Boyfriend out to dinner but, after ringing a few restaurants only to be informed that they were booked solid, I soon gave up that idea. That's what happens when you wait until 4pm on the Friday afternoon of a bank holiday weekend to try and make your reservations!

So it had to be something special from our own kitchen then. The only problem being that I wasn't due home until after 5pm and he would arrive less than an hour after me - not much time to do anything that involves long slow cooking. On the way home I wandered into the Fresh Choice supermarket in Merivale, looking for inspiration and it was there, in the freezer section, that I discovered it. Frozen prawns! Admittedly it doesn't sound like much to be excited about but these were no naked pink cooked little shrimp, but rather whole raw full-shelled fully-fledged prawns that - apart from their frozen state, obviously - looked ready to swim away given any opportunity. Not that they would have gotten any with the alacrity that I grabbed them and whizzed them home.

After defrosting - something which, according to the packet, could be sped up by immersing the prawns in cold water for just eight minutes - the cooking was just a matter of minutes. I heated some butter with a drop of olive oil (the mixture ensures that the butter doesn't burn too easily) in my big frying pan, added some chopped garlic, then the prawns and let sizzle until cooked. All the dish needed to finish it off was a squeeze of lemon juice and the prawns were ready for eating. I had cooked some pilau rice to go with accompany it but next time I think I'll just get some good crusty bread to mop up the delicious buttery juices from the pan. Rice isn't a good mopper although believe me, we tried! Finger bowls wouldn't be a bad idea, though, seeing as you have to peel the prawns one by buttery one. Deferred gratification is a wonderful stimulus to the appetite.

If I was going to have serve rice with the prawns again I might add chilli alongside the garlic and lime, instead of lemon, juice. Maybe it won't be long until this recipe is re-visited...

Garlic and Lemon Butter Prawns
Raw prawns - 250g
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
Butter - 25g
Garlic - 2 cloves, finely chopped
Lemon - ½

Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan. Add the garlic and the prawns. Cook over a medium heat for about five minutes until prawns are pink and cooked. Squeeze half lemon over pan and serve immediately.

Posted by Caroline at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2005

Anzac Day…and biscuits

Yesterday - 25 April - was Anzac Day. Now, in the days before I got myself the Kiwi Boyfriend, I mainly knew the word Anzac from some recipe for Anzac Biscuits that I had cooked when I was a kid. But I have been educated since then and now know that Anzac Day commemorates the date in 1915 when forces from this side of the world, fighting as part of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (hence the name Anzac) landed on the shores of the Gallipoli peninsula. The Gallipoli expedition has gone down in history as one of the most ill-fated campaigns of World War I. It had to be abandoned after nine months but, by that stage, almost one-third of the New Zealanders taking part had been killed.

The Anzac Biscuits of my childhood were devised by the women at home to send to their soldiers in Gallipoli. The biscuits - a mixture of oats, coconut, flour, butter and golden syrup - had to survive a long sea voyage (no airmail in those days!) hence the lack of eggs in the mixture. Despite their wartime origins, they're really very edible as I re-discovered last year. I intended on making the biscuits as a surprise for my Boyfriend who, in Ireland, had to work through what would normally be a bank holiday for him. A halt was put to my plans when I discovered that my local Tesco - never very well supplied - had run out of the desiccated coconut that I needed. There must have been more New Zealand and Australian people living in the area than I had realised! About two weeks later, when they finally got around to restocking, I was finally able to buy the coconut and make the biscuits. They might have been slightly out of date at that stage but they weren't any less tasty for the fact.

So, as this year's Anzac Day rolled around, and with me living in one of the countries particularly involved, I decided to revisit last year's recipe - until I realised that it couldn't be found. I know that I discovered the original on the internet but it seemed to be hiding this time round. I did, however, find this recipe on the New Zealand schools social studies site and, with a few tweaks, it turned out just fine although not up to the standard of the Boyfriend's mother's biscuits, of course. I must get after her for the family recipe!

Anzac Biscuits
Plain flour - 50g
Sugar - 75g
Desiccated coconut - 50g
Rolled or porridge oats - 50g
Butter - 50g
Golden syrup - 1 tablespoon
Bread soda - ½ teaspoon
Boiling water - 2 tablespoons

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Mix the flour, sugar, coconut and oats together in a large bowl. Melt the butter and golden syrup together. Dissolve the bread soda in the boiling water and add to the melted butter and golden syrup. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients mixture and add the liquids, mixing until well blended. Roll teaspoonfuls of the mixture into balls and place on a well-greased baking tray. Flatten slightly with a fork dipped in water. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until brown. Allow to cool slightly on the baking tray before transferring to wire cooling rack.

Posted by Caroline at 9:38 PM | Comments (2)

April 24, 2005

Pre-emptive hangover soup

It was a friend's 30th birthday on Saturday and we were gathering at 5pm, in fancy dress, for a few drinks before heading over to a rugby match in Christchurch - Canterbury Crusaders vs South Africa's Cats. So there was a night of merriment before us - and probably a Sunday of its aftermath. There are several ways of protecting against a hangover, a couple of them being drink plenty of (non-alcoholic) liquids and don't go on the piss on an empty stomach. So I decided to make a pre-emptive strike on the hangover by feeding myself and the Boyfriend a big bowl of homemade soup before we left the house. It was a bit of a thrown-together recipe as I was busy making a birthday cake at the same time but it did it's job - and there was enough left over in the morning to give us a very substantial brunch. A dish not only for the night before but also for the morning after!

It should have been vegetable soup but I forgot to buy celery at the Saturday morning St Albans Market so the main vegetable in it was diced carrot. I threw in a red onion for sweetness, a couple of pieces of smoked ham hock to add flavour and a few handfuls of red lentils to thicken it, kept it bubbling away on the cooker while I got stuck into the cake and the end result was far better than the lack of attention should have warranted. Take out the hocks and give it a whiz with a hand-held blender if you're looking for a soup with a bit more finesse but, as it is, it has good body and texture.

Carrot and lentil soup
Carrot - 1
Red onion - 1
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
Smoked ham hock - 2 pieces, approx 400g in weight
Red split lentils - 200g
Bay leaf - 1
Salt, pepper

Finely dice the carrot and onion. Warm the oil in a saucepan then add the vegetables and cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes until softened. Add the smoked ham hock pieces and 1½ litres of water. Bring to the boil and keep at a simmer for 20 minutes. Add the lentils and bay leaf and simmer again for another 40 minutes. Fish out the pieces of ham hock and bay leaf. Taste before seasoning - the ham hocks may be salty - and add plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Serve with plenty of hot buttered toast.

Posted by Caroline at 9:54 PM | Comments (1)

April 23, 2005

Savour New Zealand

When you move to a new place, you've got to figure out what events are going on and, when I arrived in Christchurch in January, I was thrilled to discover that this South Island city is the home of Savour New Zealand, a foodie spectacular that happens every two years. Fortunately 2005 is one of those years and the event takes place from Friday 6 May to Sunday 8 May - dates now very firmly fixed in my diary!

Apparently the weekend is structured around suites of masterclasses with a total of four sessions per day and the choice of four classes per session. Just looking at the titles of the classes is mouth-watering - Cooking the Catch, Craving Chocolate, Knead the Dough and, one that looks especially fascinating to me because of my love of spices, Middle Eastern Magic. And that's only four of the total sixteen!

But it is the presenters of the classes, and the chance of getting to meet them, that really intrigues. Anthony Bourdain, the enfant terrible of the New York restaurant scene is the name that jumped out at me. I remember when his first biography, Kitchen Confidential, jolted the publishing - and restaurant - scene. It was a breathless, entertaining and sometimes disgusting overview of the dirty business that is food preparation. A Cook's Tour, his follow-up, was a wander through the food of the world in search of the perfect meal was ok but then he played his trump card and published the Les Halles Cookbook. This file of recipes, from New York's legendary Brasserie Les Halles where he is executive chef, shows that Bourdain can not only talk the talk, but he is able to walk the walk as well. Written in Bourdain's trademark aggressive style, the Les Halles Cookbook was an education - and proof that the man can actually do something other than eat, bitch and write about it!

Another name which stands out is that of esteemed French food expert Patricia Wells, restaurant critic for L'Express, the French news weekly and writer of many cookery books of which her first one, Bistro, is currently top of my pile of books to read. There definitely have to be some experiments tried from that book and the fact that she's offering a class on Bistro Cooking at Savour New Zealand is an added bonus.

Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion has become a much-loved classic since its publication in 1996, so much so that there was even a revised and updated version released last year. Admittedly it's a tome but it is a very valuable one, an A-Z of ingredients and what to do with them. She's an Australian food writer who is justifiably acclaimed as Melbourne's queen of cuisine. I'm thoroughly enjoying her A Shared Table, a book about the food and food culture of Australia and where it draws its culinary inspiration from - many parallels to be made there with New Zealand cuisine.

And that's just three of the presenters - some of the others are rising young chef Melissa Perello, from San Francisco; New Zealand baker extraordinaire Dean Brettschneider, author of the award-winning and fascinating Baker - the Best of International Baking from Australia and New Zealand; Pegasus Bay winemaker Matthew Donaldson - Pegasus Bay is located near here, at Waipara, and make some of the most deliciously complex Sauvignon/Semillon that I've ever had the pleasure of tasting; and one of Australia's most innovative and influential chefs, Greg Malouf, whose passion for the flavours and aromas of his Lebanese heritage have helped him to create a modern and unique Middle Eastern cuisine.

With all of that on offer, there's not going to be much time for writing over the weekend but I hope to post here afterwards about the food and wine and people that I've had the pleasure of encountering during Savour New Zealand. Just two weeks to go - the count down starts here!

Read my reviews of Anthony Bourdain's books on sister site Bibliofemme:
Kitchen Confidential
Les Halles Cookbook

Posted by Caroline at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2005

Hot Smoked Salmon and Leek Tart

The first time that the Boyfriend's parents were coming to dinner, last summer in Ireland, was a bit of a challenge. It was intimidating enough having to meet the 'out-laws', as my Monaghan friend calls those to whom you are related by having a relationship with their son, but apparently the Boyfriend's father wasn't into spicy food. At that time, I was going though a phase where most things involved the addition of heat, whether in the form of a fresh or dried chilli or using some spicy hot sauce. So, the fact that I had to avoid my favourites made me do some serious thinking about what to cook. In the end, I decided to introduce them to that great Irish fish - the salmon. But, in order to minimise preparation and cooking on the day, I went towards the idea of making a savoury tart (sounds so much classier than quiche!).

As the Boyfriend was at the time working in Dun Laoghaire, he bought some beautiful salmon fillets from the pier so I poached them with a couple of bay leaves the day before we were going to have dinner. I also cooked the tart pastry base in advance, made, I must admit, from bought pastry. Being lazy, I find ready made pastry far more convenient and, I figure, it's either use bought pastry or never make savoury tarts! One of these fine days, when I have both my food processor and a proper freezer in the same country I intend on making several batches of pastry from scratch and freezing them so I can be an oh-so-organised cook. Well, I can dream at least...

Last weekend I had the same guests for dinner so, as it had been a while since our first meeting and the Boyfriend's father seemed to like my first attempt at a Salmon and Leek Tart, I decided to update the recipe. In my freezer I had several hot smoked Akaroa salmon fillets from a Vin de Pays food and wine tour I did earlier this year. I have often had cold smoked salmon, especially at home over Christmas time as part of the festive season, but never tasted hot smoked salmon before. The moment it passed my lips on the tour I was hooked. It has a more delicate flavour than the cold smoked variety and a lovely flaky texture. The friends that I was with were kind enough to buy me a bag of the fillets and that night a portion was put to delicious use with pasta and some cream. The sizeable remnants had ended up in the freezer as we were going away for a few days and stayed there, awaiting their fate, until the other night.

Although I specify hot smoked salmon in the recipe, you can - like I did the first time - use poached salmon or, alternatively, substitute cold smoked salmon. They're all very good in their different ways. I use a half-and-half mixture of cream and crème fraîche to give the filling a bit of bite but you can, of course, use all cream - or all crème fraîche . I also add some paprika, more for colour than flavour, and am sure I got this idea from Clotilde's exemplary Chocolate & Zucchini food blog but can't seem to track it down there now.

Hot Smoked Salmon and Leek Tart
Shortcrust pastry - enough to line a 25cm quiche tin (when in Ireland I often use precut pastry circles from Jus Rol)
Leeks - 4 medium
Butter - 1 teaspoon
Hot smoked salmon fillets - 2 large, approx 300g
Eggs - 2
Cream - 150ml
Crème fraîche - 150ml
Paprika - ¼ teaspoon
Salt, pepper, olive oil
Preheat the oven to 190°C and place a baking sheet on the middle shelf.

Roll out your shortcrust pastry - if using precut pastry circles roll them a little thinner - and line the quiche tin. Line again with tinfoil or greaseproof paper, add a handful of ceramic baking beans, if you have them, or just use some dried chickpeas or uncooked rice to weigh the pastry down.

Cook for 10 minutes in the preheated oven, then take out the tinfoil/greaseproof paper and baking beans and allow to cook for another five minutes.

Meanwhile, cut leeks into slices and wash under running water. Heat some olive oil with the butter in a deep frying pan. Add the leeks, season with salt and pepper and cook over a moderate heat until tender and there is not too much liquid lurking in the base of the pan.

Flake salmon. Spread cooked leeks across base of pastry case and top with pieces of salmon. Mix eggs, cream and crème fraîche together until smooth. Add paprika and season well. Pour liquids over salmon and leeks and cook on baking sheet in preheated oven for 40-50 minutes until set and browned. Allow to stand for a few minutes before serving - if the tart is too hot then you won't get the full flavour of the filling.

Posted by Caroline at 11:36 PM | Comments (4)

April 19, 2005

Jam and fruit issues

Hmmm...sometimes it pays to study the labels of the jams you buy a little closer. After Saturday's trip to the St Albans Market I've discovered that I am eating not Black Bot Peach Jam but Black BOY Peach Jam. I had spent time searching for more information on the black bot peaches (not a good term to put into a search engine!) to no avail. But my search for black boy peaches came up trumps and it seems to be a fairly unusual type of peach with, according to one New Zealand website "dark reddy-grey skin. Bright port red and white streaky flesh." Sounds beautiful. Now, having been seduced by the jam (even if I was calling it by the wrong name) I'll have to look out for the peaches themselves, although I might have missed the season as they apparently ripen in late February.

The jam lady's produce is so fantastic that I had to go back to her and replace the first wee jar of Black Boy Peach Jam that I bought. While I was there I grabbed another jar of the delicious Lady Rose chutney as well. While I was examining her other jams and chutneys I heard her tell another customer that she was thinking of giving up the market for the winter. I'll have to get stocked up!

It was a quick trip last Saturday but I made time to stop by the Cox's Orange Pippins man only to discover, to my horror, that he doesn't have them any more. Apparently they're only in season for a really brief time, about three weeks a year and, because this man doesn't refrigerate his apples, that's all he has them for. While I respected his non-refrigeration attitude, I was kicking myself for not buying and eating more of the Cox's while they were around. He gave me tastings of the other apples on his stall and I ended up walking away with a big bag of Brayburns. They're the crunchiest and tastiest Brayburns I've ever had, knocking the Irish Tesco imports for six, but they don't have the incredible flavour of the Cox's Orange Pippins. Oh well, I guess I'm well warned in time for next year!

Posted by Caroline at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2005

Good ways to get rid of black bananas

It's always the way, isn't it? You go to the supermarket and get a lovely bunch of yellow bananas. You eat one that day, take some to work for lunch the day after and even slice one on top of your muesli for breakfast. Then you forget about their existence. It's a fact of life that any fruit sitting around in the fruit bowl for more than three days becomes invisible - until it changes colour. Then the left-over bananas are no longer enticingly yellow but a kind of off-putting mottled browny black. There's nothing to do but compost them or throw them in the bin. But wait. Maybe there's another alternative?

There was a time here in New Zealand when I didn't have many recipe books. I still don't - but at least I've photocopies of the recipes I'm likely to use, courtesy of Christchurch's amazing library. Back in the dark days I pored over recipes on bags and boxes of ingredients. Sometimes these were rubbish, but not always, and one day I discovered this recipe for Chocolate Chip Banana Cake on the back of my Cadbury's Bournville Chocolate Chips box. I tasted a similar cake, warm from the oven, years ago at some food festival in Dublin's RDS. It's fragrant moist banana-ness, enriched with melting chocolate, was what I wanted to recreate here and it truly was a success. It didn't last long that first night and I've made it several acclaimed times since. The only problem is that I only have the cup measurements - if you have a set, use them. If not, get them. They will come in handy.

Chocolate Chip Banana Cake
Butter - 50g, softened
Sugar - 1 cup
Egg - 1
Ripe ie browny-black bananas - 3, mashed
Self-raising flour - 1½ cups
Cinnamon - ¼ teaspoon
Milk - 1 tablespoon
Chocolate chips - ⅔ cup

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line a loaf baking tin. Mix butter, sugar and egg together in a bowl. Stir in the mashed bananas. Sift flour and cinnamon into the bowl. Add milk and chocolate chips and stir. Pour into tin and bake for 40-45 minutes. Cool in pan on wire tray for 10 minutes before removing from pan to cool completely. Best eaten slightly warm.

Posted by Caroline at 10:08 AM | Comments (3)

April 15, 2005

Blue Sky Kitchen by Nicola Saker ***

Although we're very solidly into autumn now here in New Zealand (autumn! In April! I'm still not quite getting my head around it) with little prospect of camping ahead, Nicola Saker's Blue Sky Kitchen: Creative Cookery For Kiwi Campers still caught my eye, despite the sickly image of the nuclear family that feature on the cover. Although not a Kiwi, I certainly am a camper cooking for a Kiwi so I figure I fall into Saker's target market. Anyway, I'm always looking for good things to cook over our wee gas burner (one-pot options only need apply) and this has plenty of great workable ideas for campsite cuisine.

Saker isn't one of these super-efficient, scary women that you sometimes see in campsite kitchens, whipping up a three-course meal with nothing but a billy can and tin opener. As she says herself, "I'm not a trained cook, and I'm not a hugely experienced camper" - sounds like someone on the same end of the scale as myself, then. The start of the book concentrates on good advice to do with food storage and, most importantly, food safety - something which is often forgotten or disregarded while camping. There are also handy lists of cooking utensils and stores for those who, unlike myself, dare to go under canvas with more than one generation.

For family camping groups, the book is full of practical suggestions for dishes that everyone - including kids - will love, burritos and meatballs being just two of many examples. But Saker also considers options for special occasions - Extra Quick, Extra Expensive Dinner for Two with duck leg confit. There's even a pudding section for those campers who are not content with ending on chunks of chocolate (my camping pudding of choice - so long as it's dark chocolate).

The recipes, which make use of native New Zealand foods such as puha, tua tua, pipi and kina, are both her own and gathered from friends and family so this book is also a picture of a summertime Kiwi way of life. Now if only the weather would get over this cold snap so I could try out some of these recipes in the surroundings for which they're intended. I've my eye in particular on some Corn Fritters and a Lentil and Rice Salad with cinnamon and allspice...

Blue Sky Kitchen is published by New Holland Publishers (NZ) Ltd.

Posted by Caroline at 9:22 PM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2005

Marketing of a Saturday

There are lots of good things about being based in the little Christchurch suburb of St Albans - we're only about 30 minutes walk from the city centre, there is the choice of a couple of supermarkets nearby (Edgeware's bare basics Supervalue and the well stocked Fresh Choice in Merivale) and, best of all, every Saturday morning there's a market in English Park, just five minutes away from the house. The English Park Market (on Cranford Street from 9am-2pm) has little in common with the kind of food markets that I am used to in Ireland. There are few of the ready prepared gourmet snacks and dishes that characterise Dublin's Temple Bar Food Market at Meeting House Square, for instance. The English Park Market instead reminds me of Thursdays spent in the Square at Mitchelstown when I was a kid. There's lots of fruit and veg, with the odd few tatty kids' toys thrown in for good measure, but where Mitchelstown Market of old loses out is in the quality of produce available here.

Every week, come rain or shine, there's an organic vegetable and fruit stall with everything from the basic onions, carrots and garlic to silverbeet (a staple over here, like spinach but bigger and stronger in every way), organic and free-range eggs, four types of apple, two types of pear, some knobbly but interesting looking peppers and lots of potatoes. It's paper bags all the way - perfect for me as I've brought my shopping bags with me and I reuse the paper bags for our breadmaker bread.

So, after loading up there - it's nearly a one-stop shop, but not quite - there are lots of other stalls to explore and one of my first stops will have to be with the Cox's Orange Pippins man. It's a tiny stall with stacks of 2 kilo bags of Cox's at the very fair price of NZ$2. Not that I'm complaining, for his are the best apples that I've tasted by far. I choose to ignore the fact that he teased me about being too young to appreciate Cox's the first day I bought them. With my return each week for another bag, I think I've proven otherwise!

As I normally turn up too late to get any good organic tomatoes, I end up buying what are called "soil grown tomatoes". They still have dirt on them, a good sign in my books, and, most importantly, smell - and taste - like real tomatoes. The tomato stall, which also has a selection of garden plants and herbs for sale, is opposite the little old lady who sells jams and chutneys. Last week she was apologising for not having her usual quota but she had visitors and they disrupted the flow of preserves-making in her kitchen. She still looked well-stocked to me and I never can resist another jar of jam, never mind the fact that the fridge is holding at least four jars at the moment. But I was good and only took one of her small jars, a Black Bot Peach jam. The scent around the stall and her encouragement made me try a selection of her chutneys. While I was initially interested in a pot of tomato chutney, it just took one tangy taste of Lady Rose and I was hooked. Lady Rose is a most delicious yellow Indian-flavoured cucumber chutney made, according to the jam lady, to an old Indian family recipe that she begged off a friend of hers. It's perfect as a dip, should you have some any stray popodums about the house, and more than moreish with strong cheddar cheese.

Once I manage to pay for my jars and move on, there is another vegetable stall to look over. Not organic, but the owner he sells good quality generous bags of green beans (perfect blanched and thrown into a stir fry), bunches of late season radishes which are a good addition to a tray of roast vegetables and, if you've missed out in the organic section, green leafy bunches of spinach and unblemished broccoli. Glencroft Downs is a Canterbury farm, not far from Christchurch, and they always, even on the worst of days, have a freezer trailer at the market, packed full of organic lamb, beef, pork and whole chickens for meat feast days. Their sign proclaims that "Farm Tours are also available by appointment" - an offer that I'll have to take them up on at some stage.

If, at that stage, bags bulging, you manage to leave then it's an opportunity to praise yourself. For me, however, it is always necessary to browse through the second-hand stalls. There are always bargains available whether it's cookbooks (The Good Cook - Biscuits, dating from 1982, is a recent purchase), kitchenware (in the past I've managed to buy a very useful bone-handled knife sharpener and an old enamelled baking tin which gets put to good use) and last week I narrowly avoided buying a handheld electric mixer and had to be dragged away from an oh-so-seventies-looking yoghurt maker. There are limits!

It's lucky we live so close to the English Park Market because my arms invariably feel like they're getting well stretched on the way home. But when I do get here, there's the thrill of emptying the bags and seeing just what I have managed to carry home. Often the produce that I find at the market will have me scrabbling for recipes I remember seeing in a cookbook. There's one thing for sure - Saturday night's dinner is going to be a feast!

Posted by Caroline at 4:11 PM | Comments (2)

April 12, 2005

A Mexican-style meal

Last night we had a couple of the Boyfriend's friends staying over - giving me the opportunity to cook dinner for more than the usual two people. Given that we were abroad in the Southern Alps for the day there wasn't much time for planning. I toyed with the idea of my usual, but easy and delicious, Chicken with Garlic and Lemon for dinner but a chance encounter with a menu in the café where we stocked up on caffeine while driving back from Lake Coleridge gave me the idea of doing a Mexican and cooking my cousin's Refried Beans. So there was a quick dash to the supermarket to stock up on the ingredients for the side dishes - Ruth's Refried Beans are tasty by themselves but half the fun of this meal is in piling your tortilla too high with guacamole, salsa and sour cream so that the beans start to fall out the bottom. Messy but fun! Some tortilla chips, if you have them in the house, are good for the purposes of trying to keep the food in the wraps or mopping up the excess afterwards.

This is a recipe that my cousin once cooked, in a whirl of activity, for me and her family at the end of a very long drive. After a bit of begging she emailed me the recipe and it's since become a staple in my own collection. Since I've started cooking and freezing my own beans here, Ruth's Refried Beans are never too far away. This time, as it happened, I had the kidney beans in the freezer and just had to supply the tins of white beans. Normally I - and my cousin - use black eyed beans but last night I only had one tin of cannellini beans and one of butter beans and it worked fine. If you're making this for vegetarians then use vegie stock but otherwise you can use chicken stock. I never use real stock for the Refried Beans instead relying on powder. I've found Vegeta Chicken Stock to be good here in New Zealand but, if at home in Ireland, Marigold Swiss vegetable bouillon powder can't be beaten.

One word of advice, though. I once cooked this for eight people and had to use three pans so, unless the frying pan you have is ginormous then it's easiest to stick for meals for two or four.

Ruth's Refried Beans
Serves 4
Kidney beans - 2 tins
White beans - 2 tins
Onions - 2, chopped
Garlic - 2 cloves, chopped
Stock - 400mls
Coriander - a handful, chopped
Chilli - 2 chillies, or to taste
Tortillas wraps - 2 to 3 per person

Heat a little oil in a large frying pan with deep sides and fry the onions and garlic until soft but not coloured. Mash the beans in a bowl and add to the onions with stock, coriander and chilli. Simmer until the mixture has reached the required texture. It usually takes about 20 minutes to become a sticky paste.

Serve with heated tortillas, guacamole, salsa and sour cream.

Guacamole
Avocados - 2, ensure that they are ripe
Garlic - 1 clove, finely chopped
Lemon or lime - 1, juiced

Mash all the ingredients together. Do not make it too long before eating. Although there is plenty of citrus juice in it, avocados have a nasty habit of trying to turn brown anyway.

Salsa
Vine-ripened tomatoes - 6
Scallions - 3
Red pepper - 1

Chop all ingredients finely and mix together. If you have some coriander left over from the beans then add it to the Salsa. Best made about an hour before you're due to eat to allow the flavours to blend together.

Posted by Caroline at 9:31 AM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2005

Cooking for Mr Latte by Amanda Hesser ***

Unlike many foodie memoirs that add recipes on to the end of each chapter, Amanda Hesser - a New York Times writer - actually understands the many meanings of food. Cooking for Mr Latte, subtitled A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes, incorporates food as seduction and comfort, a means of binding together families at difficult times and celebrating the good occasions.

Ostensibly a diary of her relationship with a certain Mr Latte - aka New Yorker journalist Tad Friend - from first date through courtship, meeting each other's families and friends, to engagement and marriage, Hesse weaves food into the warp and weft of this book in a most intelligent way. The recipes that you end up with are not so much a collection of dishes as a journey through her life. While the story of the romance is flimsy enough, what enlivens the book and gives it substance are the recipes. It's the opposite of Nigella Lawson's Feast, not least that Cooking for Mr Latte only contains a handful of recipes while Feast is choc-full of them. While Hesser's interest in food makes this book interesting, the story of Lawson's life - and the reader's awareness of it - infuses the recipes in Feast with meanings far beyond that of a normal cookery book.

Cooking for Mr Latte is also an answer to that question "what does a restaurant critic eat when she's at home?" and shows how the job impacts on her life - not too badly, it has to be said. Whether you're interested in Hesser's fabulous New York life - dinners with Jeffrey Steingarten, eating at the French Laundry - or not, you can't but be grabbed by the recipes. From Peach Tart, adapted from her mother's recipe; Arborio Salad with Pine Nuts and Lemon Zest from an idea she got when she was working at a restaurant in Italy; a recipe for Ginger Duck which originally came from her mother-in-law's housekeeper, BaBa; to Mr Latte's Couscous with Celery, Parsley and Red-Wine Vinegar, from his cooking debut for her, they're all precious to Hesser and may become as valuable to the reader. All the above have made it into my file of things to try. Stay tuned for more details!

Cooking For Mr Latte is published by WW Norton.

Posted by Caroline at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

April 9, 2005

Restaurant review: Indochine, Christchurch

Moving to a new city in a new country is not exactly the time for extravagant dinners à deux. When you're looking for work and trying to scrape the money together to rent and furnish a flat, it seems like wanton extravagance to splash out on sumptuous meals - unless, of course, your Bibliofemme friends club together to give you and your Boyfriend a voucher for a night of cocktails and food at Christchurch's Indochine on Cambridge Terrace. What better way to introduce yourself to a new city than with a meal in a restaurant you've never heard of?

First impressions were good - the elegant décor has a strong Eastern influence with black lacquered screens cutting the room into cosy, low-lit sections. The fact that our first cocktails took a while to arrive didn't start the night off on the best footing but this minor annoyance was quickly assuaged by the quality of the drinks. Indochine prides itself on its cocktail menu and there's plenty of choice here for the connoisseur. Even though we couldn't quite identify the contents of the Boyfriend's Mai Tai (other than rum), it had a kick like a mule and my Tropical Fizz wasn't much lighter so the alcohol, coupled with hunger, meant that a good mood prevailed ever before we set eyes on the food menu.

Indochine has an eclectic take on East-West fusion cooking with Dim Sum openers moving confidently from Grilled Fish Cakes with Cucumber Relish to Crunchy Oregano Chicken and a menu that incorporates French techniques and Chinese ingredients. The restaurant is peopled by friendly and mostly efficient staff who helpfully explain the menu after seeing your bewildered looks. It's not as complicated as it seems at first glance, however, once it is explained that starters and mains are distinguished by price rather than classification.

Seated in a private little alcove, it took us more than a little while to decide what to eat but finally we ended up with the waitress-recommended Sung Choi Bao of Pork to open the food section of the evening. Richly savoury pork mince, cooked with mushrooms and little slices of Chinese sausage, was served with lettuce leaves on the side for scooping and wrapping. The fresh, crunchy lettuce contrasted perfectly with the tasty filling and, like all great starters, it tantalised without being too filling, stimulating our appetites for the feast to follow. As the cocktails had quickly disappeared, we accompanied our starter with a bottle of Huia Vineyard Gewurztraminer which was pungent and strong enough to stand up against all the spices and strong flavours of our meal.

The Boyfriend's main course - Seared Tuna Steak with Eschallot Relish and Chilli - looked gorgeous but I only got a small taste of his beautifully cooked and Asian flavoured tuna as I was struggling with own dish of Grilled Teriyaki Marinated Ribeye Steak with Scallops. It's not that it wasn't delicious, but after living on camping food for the previous month I was a little daunted when I saw the large portion of bloody steak landing in front of me. It looked like it had only had a limited relationship with any kind of heat and, although I do like my steak somewhat bloody, this did exacerbate the whole meatiness of the dish. I had not been asked how I would like it cooked - bloody, or not at all, I presume. Despite the fact that I was full at little more than halfway though, I had a good stab at it while the Boyfriend got occasional chunks landed on his plate. He wasn't complaining, even if I did reserve the sweet, crunchy-soft deep-fried scallops that accompanied the dish for myself.

By the time we got through the meat mountain, no one was in the mood for desert and even a Chocolate Tart with Vanilla Sauce could not tempt me. What did, though, was the desert cocktail list. The Boyfriend decided on the Raspberry Tart while I chose the Chocolate Martini - as long as I get my fix, I don't care if it comes in solid or liquid form. I think I got the better deal this time as there was too much body in the Raspberry Tart, a judicious mixture of raspberries, ice cream and lime juice, while the bitter sweet Chocolate Martini was pure heaven in a glass.

Indochine is not an every week kind of place but it certainly hits the spot when you - or some friends - want to treat yourself. It's the perfect setting for a romantic dinner for two or a slightly more boisterous Sex and the City type girly gathering. Just watch out for those cocktails...

The meal cost $169.50 for one shared dim sum, two main courses with a vegetable side dish, four cocktails and a bottle of wine and Indochine is situated at 209 Cambridge Terrace, Central City, Christchurch. Phone: 03 365 7323

Posted by Caroline at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

April 7, 2005

Maple muffin making

Wednesday, if I'm at home, is my day for baking and yesterday I decided that I needed to make some muffins. I have a little book called Marvellous Muffins by Robyn Martin for a couple of weeks now (another Trademe purchase!) but it's just been lazily sitting around the kitchen, not contributing to my life in any way. I took it down yesterday and leafed through it, trying to decide what kind of muffin sounded most appealing - and what I had the ingredients in the cupboard for!

My eye alighted on a recipe for Ginger Gem Muffins - but I wasn't in a very gingery mood. The recipe also needed golden syrup, not available in my pantry, but what I did have was a bottle of precious maple syrup, a present from my Canadian friend here in Christchurch. From that thought it was the work of mere seconds to decide to substitute the golden syrup with maple syrup and the ginger with cinnamon. But, when I was in the middle of making the muffins, I discovered that, come hell or high water, there was just no way I could get the top off the maple syrup bottle and so had to use an inferior "maple-flavoured" syrup instead.

The end results did suffer for the stuck bottle top. Instead of that deliciously rich depth that you get from maple syrup I could only taste cinnamon. Not that the muffins were inedible, in fact there's only a couple left, but they didn't turn out the way that I had hoped. Next time I'll have to put the Boyfriend's strength into action and defeat that bottle!

Note to self: a handful of pecans wouldn't go amiss the next time either.

Maple and cinnamon muffins
Butter - 50g
Maple syrup - 2 tablespoons (substitute "maple-flavoured" syrup at your peril!)
Soft brown sugar - ¼ cup
Eggs - 2
Milk - 1 cup
Plain flour - 2 cups
Cinnamon - 1 tablespoon
Baking soda - 1 teaspoon
Baking powder - 1 teaspoon

Preheat oven to 200°C. Melt butter and maple syrup in a saucepan which has enough room to mix all the other ingredients. Mix in brown sugar. Lightly beat eggs and combine them with milk. Sift flour, cinnamon, baking soda and baking powder into the saucepan, add liquids and mix quickly to just combine. Fill muffin cases three-quarters full and put in hot oven. Cook for 15-20 minutes or until the muffins spring back when lightly touched.

Makes 15.

Posted by Caroline at 9:41 AM | Comments (4)

April 6, 2005

Lentil adaptations

Some days you just get feelings for things you want to cook. Others are about what you know has been sitting, reproachfully, in your cupboard for ages and making you feel that you have to cook it, now! So it was with lentils the other night. It was time to cook them - and, given my long standing hatred of potatoes, what better accompaniment to Cod with Thyme Oil?

I love lentils - love all pulses in fact, but that's a scribbling for a different day - especially in a vinaigrette dressing. And most especially if they are those small greeny-grey Puy lentils from the Auvergne in France. They are pricy, even in Ireland, but here they are rare and beyond the budget except, maybe, for special occasions. The lentils that I had to hand were common or garden brown lentils. They might not have the shape-keeping abilities of the fabulous Puy lentil (I've seen these described as "poor man's caviar" on occasion which seems to me to be stretching the point a little) but they're still a tasty option, especially when cooked with strong flavours.

Taking into consideration the fact that bacon and cod are perfect partners, I added some good dry cured bacon from the local butcher into the equation. But that was not enough for me - I had to have sauce - and so some cream was pressed into service, to mix through the lentils and bacon and give me the unctiousness that I was looking for. Otherwise a meal of fish and lentils would have felt all too healthy altogether. A marriage made in heaven? Well, not far from it - and the leftovers were perfect with rice the following day.

Creamy Lentils with Bacon
Lentils - 400g
Bay leaf - 1
Onion - 1, cut into slices
Garlic - 1 clove, chopped
Bacon - 3 slices or 75g, chopped
Cream - 150ml
Salt/pepper
Put the lentils into a pan with the bay leaf and cover them with cold water. Bring to the boil, then turn down heat and simmer until tender and cooked. This will take approximately 15 minutes, depending on how long the lentils have been sitting around for. Drain and leave to one side.

Meanwhile, fry the onion in a little olive oil over a moderate heat until it is starting to brown and caramelise. Remove from the pan and raise the temperature then add the garlic and bacon. Cook for two minutes, turn down the heat, then mix in the onions, lentils and cream. Warm gently until hot through, add salt and pepper to taste then serve.

Posted by Caroline at 7:55 PM | Comments (0)

April 3, 2005

A nice piece of cod

Although fish has never been one of my favourite foods, this trip to New Zealand and the Kiwi dependence on fish and chips as a fast food while travelling is changing all that. Rather than just taking the scoop of chips, I'm a fully paid up member of the battered fish-eating fraternity now. While I'm content to leave the cooking of fish and chips to the chippers around the country, I have decided that it's time that I learned how to cook fish myself - especially given the largesse of the seas around New Zealand.

Saturday night was designated fish night this week but we were nearly thwarted from the outset when the great fishmongers shop in town turned out to be closed and the place we thought was a fishmongers wasn't. Thankfully we eventually managed to get our hands on some cod from Akaroa, a small fishing village near Christchurch, before we had to retire home and then there was only the job of figuring out how to cook it!

With a nod to Nigel Slater's recent Grilled Monkfish with Lemon Thyme in the Observer Food Monthly, I decided to cook the cod with a thyme oil made in my new, perfect pestle and mortar. But, rather than grilling or frying it, I made my life much easier by baking the cod - less fishy cooking smells that way - and the experiment was a success! The thyme oil gave the cod a lovely, herby flavour and it was a fabulous dish served with Roasted Vegetables and on top of Creamy Lentils with Bacon.

Cod with Thyme Oil
Cod - 2 x 200g fillets
Fresh thyme - a handful
Peppercorns - 10
Sea salt - ½ teaspoon
Olive oil - 3 tablespoons approx

Shuck the thyme leaves from the stems and put them into a mortar. Add the peppercorns and salt and crush well. Add the olive oil and mix well. Rub the thyme oil into the cod then place in an oven dish. Roast at 200°C/400°F for 15 to 20 minutes until cooked through.

Posted by Caroline at 1:17 PM | Comments (2)

April 2, 2005

The perfect pestle and mortar

Having been torn from my well-stocked kitchen back in Ireland, there are many items that I miss and recently I've been searching for a second hand pestle and mortar. Well, I do need some excuses for constantly going into the fantastic second hand shops - known as 'opp' or 'opportunity shops' - here! I've been able to get all my cake tins, roasting tins and many utensils replaced at a fraction of the cost of buying everything new. And they've much more character too - very important in a kitchen!

Today, though, the Boyfriend got thoroughly fed up with me going on and on about my latest holy grail, ie the pestle and mortar, so he upped and bought me one at the swanky department store in town. Not that I'm complaining, as this fine white porcelain piece is an upgrade on my beloved old marble pestle and mortar. But the purchase is not the end in itself - there'll have to be a shift in my thoughts about cooking as I'm now able to grind my own fresh spices, pound herbs into fragrant pastes and maybe that's a pesto-making evening I feel coming upon me?

Posted by Caroline at 10:55 AM | Comments (2)

April 1, 2005

Feast: Food That Celebrates Life by Nigella Lawson ****

I've been a fan of Nigella's writing since Nigel Slater (my other favourite cookery writer) gave his readers a tip-off about her first cookery book How To Eat. In fact, How To Eat was so beloved in our house that both I and my housemate had a copy - just in case we parted ways and one of us would end up living without it. Together with all Nigel's books and Darina Allen's impressive Ballymaloe Cooking School Cookbook, How To Eat sits on that section of the cookbook shelf that gets plundered on a regular basis.

While How To Be A Domestic Goddess is also a worthwhile and oft-used book, especially if I'm in the mood for night-time baking, neither Nigella Bites nor Forever Summer managed to set my world alight. Perhaps there was too much emphasis on Nigella the TV star and not enough on Nigella the cook. So it's a relief to pick (or heft) Feast up and realise that, freed from programme constraints, this is Nigella doing what she does best; writing gloriously evocative and approachable recipes. It's a dense tome of a book, which clocks in at almost 500 pages and has text that looks like it was sized down to make sure it didn't take over another couple of hundred pages.

Chapters range from well known celebrations that involve food - Christmas, Thanksgiving, weddings, Halloween - to those which may be a little more obscure, like Eid (the feast at the end of the Ramadan fast) and Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Nigella mixes ethnic food (Gefilte Fish, Mughlai Chicken) with more traditional dishes (Simnel Cake, Shrove Tuesday Pancakes) and there's even a whole mouthwatering chapter called Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame.

The question has to be asked - does Nigella eat to live or live to eat? Considering the vast selection of recipes in Feast, it's a wonder that she has any spare time outside food preparation and consumption to have a life at all. But of course she does, and a rather well-documented one at that - from the early deaths of her mother and sister to that of her journalist husband John Diamond and towards a new beginning with her second husband, multimillionaire art collector and advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi. Her domestic goddess career seems to have worked as a counterpoint to the sadness and loss in her life and she often mentions her mother's cooking techniques or dishes that were particular favourites of her sister. There's no sentimentality involved, thankfully, but it's very clear that food, for Nigella - as for so many of us - is about far more than just physical sustenance.

One of my few gripes with How To Eat was the fact that there were no pictures. Feast is abundantly provided for in that respect and James Merrell's photographs of the food aren't too styled or perfect, instead looking both casual and attainable. This is a book that I'm looking forward to perusing at great length over the coming years and cooking many, many recipes from it. Who knows? Feast may even get to join the Ballymaloe Cooking School Cookbook/How To Eat end of the bookshelf...

Feast: Food That Celebrates Life is published by Chatto & Windus.

Posted by Caroline at 7:52 AM | Comments (0)