I am busy looking after my garden, or is it looking after me? It’s working hard, growing many of my favourite treats, including raspberries, zucchinis and cucumbers. My rangy, imperfect little beginner’s garden is very restorative. I can nurture my plants and enjoy some success, …
I’m in excellent company – Wallace, Gromit and I all love Wensleydale cheese. Crumbly, dense and savoury, Wensleydale originates from Wensleydale, Yorkshire, where it began life as a ewes milk cheese made by French Cistercian monks. It’s now made across the UK from cow’s milk, …
Cheese is pretty much my number one indulgence when it comes to Christmas. I don’t say indulgence with the purpose of getting all judgmental about food (far from it – one of my main approaches in my blog is to enjoy all food without fads or fashion). I say it because at Christmas I indulge my culinary curiosity by selecting a cheese or two to share with my family and loved ones, something special or unusual that I wouldn’t have just any old day. I’ve found some true favourites over the years, including Kingsmeade Blue and Over the Moon Goat Cheese.
Not that this post is about cheese, but rather one of my favourite condiments, the mighty chutney. I don’t know about you but I find it hard to think about chutney without thoughts of a lovely great slab of cheese, preferably something strong or sharp.
I used to be terrified of making chutney. The dire warnings of my childhood about boiling sugar, coupled with the fact that you had to sterilise jars, made me think it was way out of my league. Slowly but surely however I have grown my chutney confidence.
This recipe is a good one for Christmas because it is just that little bit special to go with little-bit-special cheese. It’s quite sweet and the brandy gives it a touch of something festive. Red currants, combined with peaches, makes it appropriately festive for our Antipodean Summer Christmas, and I am very lucky to have a batch of currants to hand from my sister’s beautiful garden.
Believe me, making chutney is out of nobody’s league. Need a gift at the last minute? Chutney. Have to contribute something for a holiday season dinner? Chutney. If you can make sauce you can make chutney – just put all of the ingredients in a pan and boil.
Happy Christmas everyone, I hope it’s restful and fun.
Ingredients:
1kg peaches, stones removed and cut into chunks
1/2 C red currants (dried are perfectly fine if you can’t get hold of fresh ones)
1 C brown sugar
1 C malt vinegar
100 mls brandy
2 t chilli powder
2 t five spice powder
1 t yellow mustard seeds
1 cinnamon stick
5 cardamom pods, squashed so the seeds can escape during cooking
Method:
Place all ingredients in a large pot. Bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for approximately one hour, stirring from time to time, until the mixture thickens.
Remove from the heat, spoon into sterilised jars and seal.
What I am about to share with you is deeply unorthodox. It’s my own recipe for guacamole, cultivated over the past two decades as I have developed a fully-fledged love of avocados. I always thought the way I made guacamole was pretty standard. You know, …
Sometimes you just need some gently savoury food in your life, for comfort’s sake. I have felt this way recently. Freshly-baked bread, cheese scones, pulses and hot drinks are the order of the day. Infused oils are an excellent way to pep up most of …
I truly love posting about dessert. I am a huge fan of baking – we have a rich and rightly-celebrated baking culture in our little country and I am happy to leap in, butter, cream and all. It feels particularly necessary right now, as Winter clings to the bitter end and another round of fertility drugs has me breaking out in shivers, aches and pimples. Despite the whole point of my little blog being cooking and sharing, it wasn’t until recently I realised that I might be excluding treasured friends and readers who can’t tuck into on gluten and diary with quite such gay abandon. I am sorry my lovely readers! And so today I am bring you my very own gluten-free chocolate brownie.
I have developed this over the past couple of years for my beloved little nephew who has suffered much unexplained ill-health, resulting in a spell as a tube-fed tot. Next time you spot a little one with a tube, give a smile to their parents – it’s damned hard work, tears and sadness. Happily our lovely little tyke is much better these days. He has a lot of gluten-free food, both for the sake of his little system and also because ground almond-based baking helps him to pack in much-needed calories.
Now, you will notice I call this gluten free, but not dairy-free. I have not experimented with replacing the butter with non-diary spread, but I reckon you could.
Give it a try – it really is pretty simple for a gluten-free bake and deliciously rich for pudding, warm with a little cream.
Ingredients:
250g chocolate- either all dark, or half dark and half milk
100g butter
2 C ground almonds
1/3 C brown sugar
1/8 t salt
3 eggs, beaten together
1 t vanilla essence
Method:
Set the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease a 20cm x 30cm baking tin. Set a pan of water to simmer on the stove.
Melt the chocolate and butter together in a large bowl over the simmering water. This is honestly my favourite bit, I love watching the butter and chocolate swirl and melt together.
Once melted and combined, take the bowl off the heat. Add the dry ingredients and stir until combined.
Add the eggs and vanilla, mix it all in and pour into the prepared tin.
Bake for 25 minutes or until just firm on top.
Apples apples apples everywhere I look right now. So it’s a good thing I like them so much and an even better thing that I am still resolutely in the apple recipe section of the Edmonds Cook Book. Today I bring to you Edmond’s …
One of the delightful things about days off, along with gleefully sitting around in your pants for as long as you fancy and not removing your slippers EVER, is ample amounts of time to whip up special treats for favourite people. My lovely Mum’s …
Some things are meant to be. I’ve been thinking about Kahawai for a while now. Common in our waters, it seems to me – and correct me if I’m wrong – that people can get a little sniffy about them. Kind of like they’re thought of as some kind of second-best fish. Tough, people say. Or flavourless.
I’m always up for a food-related challenge. Determined to find out for myself, and with the entire month of February on enforced bed-rest plus all of the internet at my disposal, I’d been googling all manner of Kahawai-related things. I had just decided on ordering some smoked Kahawai from this lovely-sounding little outfit when…..
…my husband was invited on a fishing trip. He is not a natural outdoorsman and to be honest I suspect he accepted the invitation largely due to FOMO. I wasn’t particularly convinced we would be getting any fresh fish at all. But, doubter that I am, he proved me wrong and returned with two big, silvery, glistening Kahawai (along with some rather cute little gunard – more about them in another post).
The downside to this little story that the Kahahwai were completely whole. Not skinned, not gutted, and looking up at me from the kitchen sink. Thank god for Youtube, and several messy, sweary hours later, we had some neat little Kahawai fillets at our disposal. By this time I was a bit sick of looking at fish, so it was over to the husband, aka Kahawai catcher extraordinaire, to smoke them.
It seems that for as many people who get sniffy about Kahawai, there are as many who sing Kahawai’s praises, especially as either smoked or curried. I adapted this recipe from our beloved National Radio to smoke the fillets, and gosh, they were gorgeous. Lush, flaky and flavoursome, and most definitely fine all by themselves. I do love a dip, and so used one of my precious fillets to make this simple pâté. It’s lovely with some toasted tortilla or flatbread and goes very well with a nice dry cider. I reckon you could substitute another type of smoked fish too, but I have to ask, why would you?
Smoked Kahawai fillets:
For four fillets:
5 T honey
2 T maple syrup
2 T brown sugar
Flaky sea salt
Marinate the fillets overnight in the above mixture.
Cook for half an hour or until skin flakes away with a fork. We did ours on our Weber barbeque using a smoking box and manuka wood chips .
Smoked Kahawai pâté:
1 fillet smoked Kahawai, flaked into chunks.
150g tub of sour cream
2 T mayonnaise
Juice of one lemon
Salt and pepper to taste
Place all ingredients in a bowl. Use a stick blender or masher to combine until smooth, or to your taste (some people swear by a chunkier consistency, I like mine a little smoother).
Serve with toasted tortilla or flatbread.
Well hello there. Tomato glut? Yeah, me too. Much of it not my own harvest on account of abdominal surgery recovery and whatnot, so I am doubly grateful for all of the tasty goodness that has been kindly coming my way of late. All gifts …