January 2010 Archives

A cup of hot coffee with milk at Café Mai, 79 Le Van Huu Street, Hanoi. Dark, strong and very sweet - there's a layer of condensed milk at the bottom of the cup - Vietnamese coffee is just the thing to get you going in the morning, and for the rest of the day.

The coffee often comes sitting in a bowl of warm water to keep it hot and with a glass of water for dilution purposes: I prefer to drink it straight, leaving the syrupy milk sitting at the bottom until the coffee is gone, then using the teaspoon to eat it from the cup.

It's a one-stop breakfast, available everywhere, and normally drunk while Little Missy inspects the kitchens, courtesy of an adoring waiting staff! I've not had the chance to eat so many meals with two hands for the last 10 months.

On a cold, wet, miserable day, there's nothing better than coming home to a big bowl of piping hot, homemade soup. Pick from Chicken Noodle, Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato or White Bean and Cabbage Soups and make a meal of it with Caroline Hennessy's recipes for pots of pleasure on SilverCircle.ie.

...to blue skies and lakeside walks, to fabulous food (we've been truly spoiled by the Husband's Mother!) and rich, dark coffees, to post-swim fish and chips and bowlfuls of fresh, seasonal fruit, to Little Missy figuring out how to pick the fresh peas from a homegrown pod and lazy bach days.

It gets more and more difficult to leave New Zealand each time but at least we're not heading home just yet. Next stop - via a brief stop tonight in Kuala Lumpur - Vietnam! I've heard there's more food to eat over there.

Flowers on a feijoa tree at Stafford Lane Estate when we visited on a wine tour of the Nelson area. Feijoas are very popular in New Zealand, I loved them when we were living here, but it's the wrong time of year for the fruit. You can, however, get a little of the tropical flavour from the fleshy petals of the flower.

Evilly dark long blacks, with steamed milk on the side at the Alpine Lodge Café . My coffee of choice when we're in NZ. This is an especially good example of the genre - just look at that crema.

Avocados growing on the trees in the Husband's Mother's veggie garden behind the house. Even better than bananas for convenient baby (and mama!) feeding.

Op shop bargains. When we lived here, there was little in my kitchen that didn't come from one or other of the charity shops nearby. Since we've been living back in Ireland, I've carried home a variety of finds, including bundles of bone-handled knives, battered baking tins, cute little salt pigs and hand-embroidered tablecloths. This time I was rather restrained but I still couldn't resist an old potato masher (the Husband killed ours while making his superlative mashed potatoes before we left home) and this dainty little tray cloth. Well behaved? I think so...

Sometimes the only way to get the true flavour of summer is to wriggle your feet in the grass!

Nicola Galloway may be based in Nelson, New Zealand, but this no-nonsense, practical cookbook will appeal to parents in any hemisphere. From first tastes and flavors to school lunches and dinnertimes, there are plenty of ideas here for feeding children of every age group as well as recipes you can adapt for the entire family.

A trained chef and nutritionist, Galloway focuses on healthy eating but not at the expense of taste and ease of preparation. This book is packed with simple recipes - rather than spending money on the big brand versions, why not make your own rusks, muesli or Chocolate Hazelnut Spread? - along with ideas for adding iron (dried fruit) to baby porridge, protein (ground oats) to pancakes and vitamin and mineral-rich spirulina to smoothies.

Plenty of tips on using ingredients like spices, ground nuts and kelp are scattered in bite-sized chunks throughout the text. The recipes are sandwiched between a chapter on nutrition and a collection of useful appendices, including a meal planner and food introduction table.

While this book will be of most interest to parents, there are few people that won't learn a little about eating well from reading it.

Cooking for Your Child by Nicola Galloway is published by Craig Potton Publishing and is available online - more details from www.nicolagalloway.com

Must Try: Cashew Banana Chew, Pinwheel Scones, Grilled Chicken with Yellow Rice Pilaf

Without television, radio or mobile reception, heading off to the Husband's family bach, or holiday home, at Lake Rotoiti always entails packing lots of books. The use of the Husband's Mother's library card is always very much appreciated and gives me a chance to pick up a few cookbooks from the great selection available (did I ever mention that I love NZ libraries?). Between occasional walks and trips down to the small village of St Arnaud for coffee at the Alpine Lodge café - fresh baked muffins (favourite: raspberry, pecan and chocolate) and scones every morning, great looking brunches and lunches, with long blacks worth walking miles for - there is plenty of time for reading.

I like to dig out one of the old fashioned lean-back deck chairs (it comes complete with a woggly sunshade which can either keep the sun out of your eyes or alternatively decide to land down on top of your sunglasses), pile up my bounty at the side and just indulge, sand flies and Little Missy willing. This is what is on the pile at the moment.

Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe - fascinating, but chilling reading. This is full of gloomy stories about pollution, collapsing fish stocks and global warming. Apparently there's some hopeful pointers on what fish we should be eating to come but I haven't got there yet. Educational but depressing. www.tarasgrescoe.com

Cooking for Your Child by Nicola Galloway - this book by Nelson-based Nicola was introduced to me by the Husband's Mother a few years ago. I immediately loved her no-nonsense attitude to feeding kids and bought a copy for the Writer, which - after the arrival of LM - I have had on extended loan. After borrowing it from the library this trip I decided it was definitely time to buy my own copy. LM enjoys her (Nana-made) banana teething rusks, banana scrambled eggs are up for dinner tonight and I'm liking recipes that can be used for grown ups as well as smallies. www.nicolagalloway.com

Frugal Food by Delia Smith - For me, Delia's star has been forever tarnished by her appalling How to Cheat at Cooking but I did want to take a look at Frugal Food as it is an updated version of her 1970s book. I have to say that it is a little underwhelming, nothing very new or interesting to find here. www.deliaonline.com

Taste Favourites - Taste is a great food magazine that I always pick up when I visit NZ. An intelligent blend of the aspirational and achievable, every copy I look at has me reaching for my notebook to scribble down ideas and ingredient combinations. Having said that, this cookbook, with 70 recipes from the magazine, just isn't as much fun as the monthly publication. Now that my Cuisine subscription has lapsed, maybe it's time to change magazines for a while.www.taste.co.nz

While in New Zealand, staying with the Husband's parents, our nearest café is actually a boutique winery called Fossil Ridge. We pass the small vineyard on our daily walk (sometimes several times a day as the Husband tries to balance lots of eating his mother's fabulous food with regular competitive brother-in-law weigh-ins!) and the walk does occasionally get a little interrupted. An attractive wooden building, set amidst olive groves and overlooking a pond covered with water lilies, the cellar door is a relaxed setting to enjoy a selection of platters and light lunches to accompany its wines. The pond also plays host to a number of ducks, which are endlessly fascinating to a Little Missy who, if she hasn't fallen asleep in the pushchair on the walk there, is often determined to make her presence felt.

We haven't yet tried much of the savoury side of the menu - too well fed at home, we are! - but we're becoming regulars for coffee, which is served with delectable little homemade cookies. Their lemon shortbread is worth checking out and they also make a crunchy Macadamia Caramel Square with locally grown nuts. Each year we visit, we also make a date to try out their wines. For NZ$7, you get to choose four out of their six wines for your tasting plate, accompanied by a few olives and walnuts (although, as the Husband pointed out, both the number of olives and quality of nuts has depreciated since our last visit in 2007).

Although it was their Pinot Noir that we fell for last time round, their latest Pinot vintage, from 2007, didn't do anything for me. I am, however, a long-time fan of their zesty, slightly honeyed Riesling (2007) and the 2008 Gewürztraminer was a spicy, aromatic mouthful.

Small enough for the personal touch and with just enough wines to taste without confusion, Fossil Ridge is well worth dropping into if you are nearby. Although tempted to try and squeeze a couple of bottles into my luggage, it might be more reasonable to track them down in Ireland. A good excuse for another visit, perhaps...