July 2005 Archives

This distinctive book - its size and multi-coloured stripes will ensure that you won't mislay it in your kitchen - is a veritable tome but it is surprisingly readable. It sat on my coffee table for a month, chapters to be digested along with meals, and it has so many post-its hanging out of it to denote the ideas that interest me or recipes that I would like to try that it runs the risk of most of the 1075 pages (not including the index) being marked.

The book is an A-Z, by ingredient, and each chapter starts with a treatise by Stephanie Alexander on that particular ingredient plus information on varieties and season, selection, storage and preparation. A handful of well chosen recipes follow, accompanied by margin notes which point out complimentary ingredients and give ideas for other dishes.

Although I thought The Cook's Companion, being an Australian cookery book, would only have limited interest for me, its practical A-Z of ingredients and techniques looks fair set to surpass my reliance on Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course.

There is a real personality to this book with surprisingly funny comments from Alexander and, although her habit of using unnecessary parenthesis can sometimes irritate, maybe that wouldn't be quite as noticeable if you were dipping in and out of The Cook's Companion rather than swallowing it whole.

There are plenty of unusual - to Northern Hemispheric eyes - ingredients including kangaroo, wallaby and albone but the amount and quality of information on more readily available things like lemons, coconuts, spinach and rice make this book worth turning to on a regular basis. And, if I even need to cook a yabby, I'll know exactly where to find all the information. Worth investing in.

It's been years since I ate porridge regularly for breakfast. Lumpy and overboiled, it was always a one of the foods that I hated as a child - unless it was made in the Aga at Oldcastletown by my grandfather. Put into the bottom oven the previous night, his porridge was one of the highlights if we stayed overnight. I went through a porridge phase at college as it was cheap and seemed to be filling. It was then that I discovered how digestible oats actually are, as I would end up being hungry about half way through my first lecture.

Since then the only reason I've had porridge oats in the house is to make Anzac Biscuits, Oaty Apricot Biscuits or to experiment with a few more Flapjack recipes until a few weeks ago when we met a couple of the Boyfriend's friends for early brunch on a Sunday morning. It being rather earlier than my normal Sunday rising time, I decided that I was too delicate for the more robust items on the menu (Eggs Hollandaise, Savoury Muffins, a fried breakfast) and instead went for the Porridge with Boysenberries and Greek Yoghurt. What arrived was a creamy concoction spiked with sunflower seeds, coloured a delicate pink from the boysenberries, and topped with a great dollop of Greek yoghurt. A most delicious and comforting bowlful.

I had no sooner scraped the bowl clean, than I was thinking of variations to try at home. Sunflower seeds seem to prevent hunger pangs from settling in too soon so they would have to be added. Toasted walnuts, cinnamon, Greek yoghurt and maple syrup, perhaps? Obviously frozen boysenberries would have to be purchased for my own experiments and what about chopped dried apricots, yoghurt and toasted flaked almonds?

Porridge is a true weekend breakfast as I have neither the time nor inclination to go fiddling around with pots and pans in the morning before work. Not to mention cleaning of the porridge pot, never an altogether pleasant job. I use a small red cast-iron saucepan for the cooking, which is a good defence against letting the porridge burn. Make life easier for yourself by always soaking the pot in cold water immediately after you serve your porridge. The variations are endless although I must admit to a weakness for the chopped dried apricots, yoghurt and toasted flaked almonds combination, especially when the apricots are stirred through the porridge and the yoghurt is floated on top beneath the almonds. Every mouthful thus brings a taste and texture contrast between the hot porridge, cold yoghurt, sweet apricots and crunchy almonds. Yummy!

My mother makes the best scones. There's always a carton of cream souring in the fridge to add lightness to the eventual product, which, when I come home, are often piled high on the wire rack to cool, large, golden and flecked with sultanas. They're the kind of scones that you can't resist eating warm from the oven, with plenty of melting butter. Travelling back to Dublin after the weekend there's often a bag of them stuffed into my bag. A couple for eating on the train and several more to be toasted and enjoyed at a slightly later date.

Because Mum is the queen of the scones, it's never something that I've had to be good at. As a result, perhaps, I've never had her hand for lightness either. Recently, reading Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, I came across a recipe for Date Scones which captured my imagination at once. On the next available baking opportunity I made up a batch but, to my sorrow, they remained rather flat and hard. It has to be said that they were very tasty though and, not one to let a failure stand in the way of experimentation, I attempted a second batch - this time with another scone recipe - at the weekend.

Although my Date Scones didn't rise as much as my mother's versions - I really must quiz her about her recipe! - they were much more successful that the first lot. Rather than cut them into neat circular scones, I just put the whole piece of dough onto the baking tin and cut it into rough squares before landing the whole thing in the oven. I really must stress that the nutmeg needs to be freshly grated. It's not difficult to buy a whole nutmeg and grate it yourself and the taste and scent are incomparable to that of a regular packet of ground nutmeg, complementing the dates remarkably well.

Although a little sweet, these Date Scones are also fabulous with slices of good mature cheddar cheese. The crumbly Dubliner was my budget cheese of choice in Ireland and Mainland's Vintage is a good substitute in New Zealand.

Michelin-starred Irish chef Conrad Gallagher sets out the ethos of this book in the introduction. Each recipe is to contain just six ingredients - not counting salt (Maldon Sea Salt), pepper (freshly ground) and best quality olive oil.

Gallagher always has been a curious mixture of the inspired (his cooking) and the pretentious (his behaviour) and he cannot resist adding, in the introduction, that he dives for his own, hand-picked scallops. The recipes also bear this out. The home cook's heart may sink when faced with recipes for Scrambled Eggs with Foie Gras, Truffle and Chives or Oysters with Caviar, Radish and Cucumber but, later in the book, you will also encounter recipes for relatively simple but taste-complex dishes including Lemon Soup, Smoked Chilli Buttered Sweetcorn and Caramelised Bananas with Lemongrass.

Just skip the last few lines of each recipe as Gallagher gives instructions on plating and presentation. For me, if I want something beautifully titivated on a plate, I choose to go to a restaurant. It's not an ambition of mine for the home kitchen.

For all Gallagher's presentation obsessions, there are some great recipes here. And yes, he does just use six ingredients. Well worth checking out and, if you're trying to reach restaurant standards at home, this will be the book for you.

Enjoying Moroccan food as much as I do, I am a big fan of preserved lemons. Years ago, when I was living in a flat in Dublin, I made a jar of preserved lemons which I didn't have the nerve to use. So they just sat there and sat there on top of the cupboard looking like, as one visitor put it, preserved babies heads - I really don't know what he was drinking at the time!

That batch of preserved lemons ended up the dustbin but I'm not a person to let one failure cause me to stop trying, especially when I had a lemon tree outside the door. Before we moved, I gathered a selection of ripe lemons and, using a variety of methods from a variety of places, made myself a jar of preserved lemons. They're currently sitting on the top shelf of my pantry, happily maturing away (I hope), getting ready to be chopped into couscous, tagines, risottos, stews...

Not having a television means that my perusal of cooking programmes is, to say the least, limited. But at least I can find out about them on the internet and the playful online adverts for Iron Chef America - which include a yodeling catfish - certainly make me want to see this series although I've no idea when it will be screened in New Zealand.

I had heard a little about the original Japanese show, which comprised of a couple of chefs competing against each other and the clock to cook a meal featuring a mystery ingredient which is revealed at the beginning of each episode. Last year the Food Network (who recently made an appearance here, filming Anthony Bourdain at Savour New Zealand) made a very successful American version.

The second series of Iron Chef America has just started on US TV and, judging from the adverts, there'll be skin and hair flying! See for yourself here and the official website is here.

One of the nicest meals out that I ever had with my family occurred in a small, unpromising, cellar-type Italian restaurant on the Douglas promenade in the Isle of Man about five years ago. We were on a family holiday and, when the ages of the family members range from my Granny, still sprightly in her mid-eighties, to an ever-active obstreperous pair of children, then aged nine and ten, it is sometimes difficult to strike the right balance between keeping the kids fed and entertained while the adults relax. But this restaurant managed it very well. The younger duo were fascinated at being able to observe the cooking in the open plan kitchen and the older members of the party were kept laughing by a flirtatious Italian waiter who tried to insist that Granny had wine. They were no mean shakes in the food department either but my clearest memory is of the dish that my sister ordered. She was the last to be served but we were all impressed at her plate of lamb shanks, braised so that the meat was meltingly tender, falling off the bone when touched by her fork. Or touched by the forks of others at the table for we weren't going to allow her to struggle through such a plateful on her own!

Since then I have rarely encountered lamb shanks on a restaurant menu. I have, however, often come across them in cookbooks and have been amassing a collection of recipes in case some shanks should arrive on the doorstep some day. Recently, when some former housemates from Ireland were coming round for dinner, I decided to take the plunge. Peter Timbs Butchers in Edgeware provided me with four meaty shanks and all I had to do was figure out which way I wanted to cook them. As I had been going through an Indian and Middle Eastern phase lately, I decided that I wanted to go with something more straightforward and Tamasin Day-Lewis' West of Ireland Summers had just the recipe I needed. Her Braised Lamb Shanks were served with Champ but, as I am not in the least bit interested in potatoes, I decided to accompany the dish with Nigel Slater's Chickpea Mash. With Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese as vegetables on the side and (another) Feijoa and Apple Crumble for desert we had the perfect cold winter evening comfort dinner.

Those of you who are regular readers may have noticed that it's been quiet on Bibliocook over the last week or so. The reason for this is because I have recently returned from a road trip up the East Coast of New Zealand's South Island with my mother and aunt who were visiting from Ireland.

After a few nights in Christchurch where we introduced them to New Zealand foods like silverbeet (in the form of a Pasta and Silverbeet Bake), lamb (Braised Lamb Shanks with Chickpea Mash) and kiwifruit (Apple and Kiwifruit Crumble - the crumble obsession continues!) while keeping them topped up on Irish foodstuffs (Brown Soda Bread, Ham and Pea Soup), it was time to hit the road. Just because we were touring didn't mean that we had no time for food. On the contrary. Food assumes an even greater importance when you're on the road for several hours a day and we weren't even an hour out of Christchurch when we stopped off at the Brew Moon Brewery and Café for tasty refreshments.

We spent a couple of nights at a bach at the township of Oaro near Kaikoura with the aforementioned Ham and Pea Soup, supplemented by the traditional New Zealand fish and chips on the beach. Leaving Kaikoura and travelling north, we kept our eyes open for the only building on the right hand side of the road - The Store at Kekerengu. On last year's miserable Christmas Eve, after a rude awakening in our Kaikoura hostel, the Boyfriend and I had had a large morale-boosting cooked breakfast here. This time round, even though it is mid-winter here, the weather was warm enough for us to take our food outside and eat in the sun, although it wouldn't be any kind of hardship to eat indoors in the airy rustic surrounds of the refurbished dining area. Although The Store is just off State Highway 1, you're a world away from any kind of driving stress with great food, good coffee and a view to die for. It wasn't too long after breakfast but we couldn't pass up a piece of the Kiwi classic Ham and Egg Pie to share. Always good to have something sweet with the coffee/tea so we also chose a Tan Slice (like a shortbread-caramel-chocolate layered Millionaire Square but without the chocolate).

I have just been informed that Marigold Swiss Vegetable Bouillon Powder is actually available in New Zealand. As you may have noticed from past posts, it was my stock powder of choice in Ireland and I have been moaning about its lack of availability over here! In Ireland it is available in both supermarkets and health food shops but, despite my searching, I haven't come across it here. Apparently it is distributed by an Australian company who contacted me to let me know that it is sold in NZ. Fingers crossed I can track it down soon in Christchurch.

When you're driving the long distances that are necessary to get anywhere in New Zealand, good quality rest stops, with coffee, cakes - and clean toilets - become very important. That's why it breaks my heart to discover one so close to my current hometown of Christchurch. I've often spotted the enticing entrance of the Brew Moon Brewery and Café (situated about 50km from Christchurch) but, as it is normally too close to either the start or end of a journey it has never been a place for stopping. This week the prolonged start of a road trip with my visiting mother and aunt (nicknamed Thelma and Louise by my sister) gave me an opportunity to sample the facilities.

By the time we reached Brew Moon, it was already time for a toilet stop and, naturally, it would be rude not to sample the local delicacies. Alas, being the designated driver - and the fact that it was only midday - meant that the brew side of things could not be tested. Instead we opted for coffee and tea, ordering a blueberry muffin, piece of carrot cake and that Kiwi classic, a Ginger Gem.

Despite the fact that it was midweek, there were another three tables occupied, keeping the lone waitress busy and delaying the arrival of our order but as we were in no hurry, having plenty of family news to catch up on, this was not a problem. And we weren't complaining when the cakes arrived. Fresh and delicious, my Gem was a little larger than usual but, shared among three, it didn't last long. The muffin had the crunchy top of baking that had recently left the oven and the carrot cake was an shining example of its kind. Pieces were swapped, crumbs swept up and fingers licked. The bathrooms didn't leave the side down, making up in size for what they may have lacked in numbers on a busy day. On this quiet Wednesday so there were no queueing problems.

Brew Moon Brewery and Café is a good place to start your journey or to revive spirits before you reach home. Well worth visiting for the range and quality of sweet treats.

The Brew Moon Brewery and Café is located at 150 Ashford Rd (SH1). Phone: 03 314 8030

Having thought that there wasn't too much different between the New Zealand and Irish climates, I've been amazed to discover that lemon trees grow here. And, what's more, they actually fruit too! While living with the Boyfriend's parents in Nelson it was a great treat to go out and pick some lemons from a tree that fruits year-round but, as we live in much colder Christchurch, I didn't think that we would have that option ourselves.

Our first home in Christchurch was a unit - basically a flat on its own land. After years of apartment living it was great to have a garden of our own, albeit a two meter square lawn and some hedges that rapidly got out of hand. I didn't realise until much later that the green oval berries on one of the garden shrubs were actually nascent lemons and, even though we've moved into winter a while ago, they continued to grow and turn yellow until they were small, but perfectly formed, lemons. The tree itself was rather small, with lovely glossy evergreen leaves and, when it was covered with lemons ripening at different stages, it was a magnificent sight indeed. The first batch I harvested got made into preserved lemons - more Moroccan influences! - and they're sitting curing in the cupboard at the moment.

Alas, my lemon paradise didn't last for long. Last weekend we moved into a new (to us) house which, although gorgeous, is sadly lacking a lemon tree. But it does have an even bigger garden and I have plans for a sunny North-facing wall - in NZ some things get turned upside down - out the back. Having done some research it seems that the elusive, and beloved of New York Times columnists, Meyer Lemon is the best adjusted variety to the Christchurch hot summer/cold winter balance. Although Meyer Lemons - a hybrid cross between a regular lemon and either an orange or a mandarin - have gotten good press for their sweeter-than-an-average-lemon juice, they don't have the best skin when it comes to zesting. There might have to be a pair of lemon trees purchased, if I have my way...

As the perfect birthday present for a person on the other side of the world to Ireland, Clare Connery's Irish Cooking comes pretty close.

There's nothing new about this cookbook - nor does there need to be. With an introduction that brings the writings of Maura Laverty to mind, Connery talks about her grandmother's farmhouse kitchen and the dishes that came from it. She sums up the roots of the Irish kitchen when she says that there may not have been much sophistication in the cooking but the food was sustaining and delicious.

Connery's recipes, too, are both nourishing and tasty. The book is broken down into eight chapters - Soups, Starters and Snacks, Fish and Seafood, Meat, Poultry and Game, Vegetable Dishes, Puddings and Deserts, Bread, Cakes and Baking.

There's little pretentiousness attached to the food here but recipes for near-forgotten dishes of childhood are precious when you're so far from home. Ham and Pea Soup is a great cold-weather warmer and I've been having lots of nostalgic fun with the recipes for White and Brown Soda Bread. There are all the old reliables to try out at this side of the world - Beef and Guinness Stew, Tea Brack, Oxtail Stew, even the Kiwi Boyfriend's unlikely favourite - Boiled Cabbage and Bacon.

While this book is strong on the basics of the Irish kitchen but it does have one, I assume, American, fault. In her recipes for Soda Bread Connery talks about soda bread flour. It's not something I've ever come across in Ireland. She does give plain flour/cream of tartar alternatives but the measurements seem to vary a bit between recipes. Even so, I've had no problems with the end result but perhaps this is something which could be better explained in a later edition.

Irish Cooking is a book that will probably get much more use over here in New Zealand than it ever would at home. The perfect gift for Irish people who are living abroad.

Irish Cooking: Over 100 Traditional Recipes by Clare Connery is published by Hamlyn.

I spent Wednesday night last week at a cookery demonstration by the Christchurch branch of the New Zealand Vegetarian Society. No, I'm not going over to the dark side - I love meat too much - but their description of the evening intrigued me. Vegetarian Cuisine for the Non-Vegetarian sounds just like my cooking style in Ireland. That was, of course, before I landed in New Zealand and discovered that meat is cheap, there are several good butchers nearby and even the supermarket meat comes with a sticker indicating what it should be used for. Still, I am always open to new kinds of cookery and the line-up of dishes, which included Mushroom Nut Croustade, Savoury Polenta, Cinnamon Pear Cream, Vegetable Pakoras and Puris was very tempting.

So I took myself along to the Canterbury Horticultural Centre on Riccarton Avenue on Wednesday night and had a fascinating evening. There were a total of ten dishes demonstrated by three people - Yolanda Soryl, who runs an eco-friendly B&B by English Park, an Indian lady called Janaki Kandula and Vanya Maw of Wyenova Organic Farm. There were about 30 people there, many who seemed to know each other well, and it was all very relaxed and informal.

Yolanda was up first and she started with Mushroom Nut Croustade which she said was based on a recipe from famed vegetarian cook Rose Elliot that she got from the radio some years ago. My first misgivings arose when she used olive oil margarine and soya milk. Coming from a farming background - I was even an occasional milker of cows at my grandfather's farm in Oldcastletown - I am a lover of dairy products, especially butter. However, as Yolanda had told us that we would have the opportunity to taste samples of all the dishes at the end of the evening, I decided to wait and see how it actually tasted before making snap judgements.

An entertaining demonstrator, Yolanda has been doing this since 1988, and she had plenty of tips to offer. I discovered where to buy cheap sacks of nuts in Christchurch, a replacement for my beloved Marigold Swiss Vegetable Bouillon Powder (Rapunzel Vegetable Bouillon), that Brazil nuts are always organic and that my local health food shop - Piko Wholefoods - stock organic homemade peanut butter. It was also interesting to learn that you can make pesto with silverbeet - seeing as the Boyfriend is a devoted lover of silverbeet this could be a new dish to try out on him!

Janaki Kandula runs a series of Indian cooking classes at nighttime in Riccarton High School. After the mustard seeds that she cooked for her Tomato Chutney tried to asphyxiate us, the demonstration went off smoothly and we learned how to make Puris - a type of Indian bread - Date and Tamarind Chutney and Vegetable Pakoras. During Janaki's demonstration she passed around jars of her own pungent-smelling ginger-garlic paste and fragrant all-spice powder and told us how to make these ourselves. (ginger-garlic paste: blend 100g ginger with 50g garlic and 25g salt; all-spice powder: crush together 2 teaspoons of coriander seeds, 6 cloves, the seeds from 6 cardamom pods and 1" cinnamon stick).

Vanya Maw was last up and in her demonstration she strongly emphasised the nutritious value of food. We were treated to conspiracy theories about the dairy and beef industries, a diatribe on the evils of sugar and positive tofu propaganda. I have to admit that tofu is something I despise but, as with the soya milk and olive oil margarine, I decided to go with the flow and let the proof of the pudding be in the final tasting. And pudding was what we got from Vanya. After she made a batch of Savoury Polenta, she moved on to Chocolate Nut Brownies, with the aforementioned tofu, and a Cinnamon Pear Cream which was a simple (and surprisingly tasty) blend of liquidised tinned pears, cashew nuts and cinnamon.

In the tastings, I have to say that I was hugely impressed with my piece of Mushroom and Nut Croustade - although I think it might be even nicer with butter, milk, and perhaps a bit of bacon. Heresy! It was definitely the nicest dish of the evening, although the Puris and Vegetable Pakoras were also compeditors, and something that I definitely will be cooking at home. I also hope to make Vanya's Cinnamon Pear Cream as it had a richness which belied the simplicity of its ingredients. The Brownies? Well, let it just be said that tofu and I are still not on good terms!