Birthday lunch at Orewa

We rarely went on holiday when I was little, but I do have a vivid memory of one holiday at Orewa with my mother and grandmother. We stayed in a kind of boathouse, one very large room with a wooden floor, right on the beach. I wore a pretty little sunsuit with shirred elastic, and a cotton sunbonnet. My mother would have made them both.
          I must have been about four, because I don't think my sister was there - she arrived when I was five.  A few weeks ago, she took me back to Orewa for a late birthday treat.  It's changed so much, I don't have any idea where those old beach houses would have been.

           But I was delighted to find we were going to meet the rest of the family at a rare survivor from the past that I didn't know existed: Walnut Cottage. It must have been there in my childhood, because it was built in the 1850s. It's been well designed to suit children as well as adults, with plenty of intriguing toys, room to play with them, a kids' menu and very friendly staff. My little great-nephew had a marvellous time, while his new sister slept on blissfully through it all in her pram.
           The family currently running it are German, so the adults' menu offered interesting dishes from schnitzel and knodel to pancakes and apple strudel. Our two chaps went for pork belly, my niece and niece-in-law had burgers, and my sister and I both chose what was described as "Our Famous Scallop and Bacon Salad". And very good it was too - four kinds of fresh lettuce (no manky mesclun here), crispy bacon, and a generous helping of nicely cooked scallops, with toasted foccacia on the side. So good to find a family cafe serving food that's different and delicious.

For dessert, of course we had to have apple strudel - but mine came with something extra. Thanks to my sister and her family, I couldn't have had a nicer day.

Walnut Cottage

498 Hibiscus Coast Highway (turn down the long drive - the cottage is set in a garden and overlooks the bush and the river)

Open for breakfast, morning or afternoon tea, and lunch, 9.30 am - 4 pm, Weds-Mon (closed Tuesday). I think it's also open for dinner some nights - check. For larger groups, make a booking: phone 09 427 5570.

Snow means soup

Absolutely freezing here. Oh, all right, not technically freezing - certainly nothing below zero, as it was down south last month. (At Tara Hills, near Omarama in the Mackenzie Country, it was -21C on 24 June, the coldest day in the country for twenty years.) But a top temp of 7C (for five minutes in the early afternoon) is about as cold as it gets in Wellington. There was snow on my lawn this morning, and it stayed there till lunchtime.
       I have an automatic reaction to cold weather: soup.  I haven't come up with any stunning new recipes this winter, but I've gone happily back to some old favourites, and I thought it could be handy to collect them up. So: here are four I made (and posted) earlier!

Classic pea and ham
The welcome advent of neat packs of bacon bones in Countdown sent me home to make this.

Bacon bones are better than hocks, there's less fat and they have a better flavour.

Pumpkin
Cheap, easy, lots of variations. This Turkish one is lovely: Bulkabagi Corbasi.

But straight pumpkin with curry powder or stock is fine too. If I'm too busy (or too lazy) to start from scratch, I cook up and puree a nice piece and add it to a good commercial pumpkin soup or, if I'm feeling poor, a cheap can... not as good, of course, but a lot better than no pumpkin soup at all.

Leek and potato
(or, if you prefer, Potage Parmentier)
Simplest of them all, extremely healthy (though not if you put the recommended butter and cream in, of course, but I generally don't).

Minestrone alla Karori
The "biggest" soup of them all - with bread, and maybe a bit of salami, definitely a whole meal in itself. So that's dinner sorted.

Lunch at United Kitchen

Camille is my Auckland friend of longest standing - we were at school together, and she features in the French chapter of my memoir. She's a sister gourmande, and she also has very knowledgable foodie friends.  So I asked her to find the restaurant for my belated birthday lunch on Friday with her and Rosemary (the finest private cook I know). United Kitchen in Anglesea St, Ponsonby, came warmly recommended, and when she phoned to book she struck gold. They just happened to be holding a special five-course lunch that day with Central Otago winemaker Akarua. Irresistible!

          We began with a glass of pale, elegant brut, followed by another (well, we did get there early and I did tell them it was my birthday - only Rosemary, as the driver, was admirably restrained). It went very well with the sweet potato tortellini with truffle mascarpone, crisp sage and beurre noisette. (Please forgive me, dear Akarua, for not photographing the wine as well as the food - you can see everything we drank here.)

Then thin slices of confit hapuka, red quinoa and citrus salad and watermelon radish, served with the very pretty rose brut.

Next came pork cheek and scallops (brilliant), heirloom carrots and apple salad, with the 2014 pinot gris.

And a perfect little beef cheek and mushroom pie, looking like a miniature pithivier, and smoked potato puree (I must find out how they did that), with the 2013 Bannockburn pinot noir.

Finally - sorry, I didn't get a good photo, you'll just have to imagine it - a pear and rhubarb crumble and pistachio icecream, with Alchemy ice wine.

           Everything was beautifully served by a handsome young man from Marseille (who even complimented me kindly on my French). Couldn't get much better, I thought - but it did. There was a draw for a magnum of Akarua Brut, and I won. There it is on the windowsill. No wonder we look so relaxed and contented.

In praise of lamb - and Julia

One advantage of having my son staying with me at the moment is the good excuse it gives me to have a roast, especially a leg of lamb. They were on special this week and I was having my neighbour round for her regular dinner. She's a real carnivore, and she suffers from that living-alone problem of not having proper roasts, so I knew she'd love it - and so would my son.
          Even on special they still seemed expensive. But when the long knobbly bone finally went into the trash on Tuesday, picked very clean indeed, I worked out exactly how many meals we'd had off that leg (which weighed 2.48 kg).
           Roast dinner for three, cold meat for two twice, rissoles for two twice, and a few lamb sammies for lunch as well. I'm particularly fond of slices of pink roast lamb made into sandwiches with nice soft white bread and a good sprinkling of salt and pepper.
          So the initial layout of $27 covered, let's say, 10 servings of dinner (allowing for the fact that I added a soup and some fritters to eke out the meat here and there) - that's $2.70 per person for meat. Not bad, eh.
          And very delicious it was too. The blog has the recipe I usually use for the roast itself and for those rissoles. But this time I decided to use Julia Child's basic recipe for roast leg of lamb, because I was short of time earlier in the day and didn't want to be bothered with the mustard coating in advance.

It was an interesting exercise. I was intrigued to see that she adds salt and pepper only at the end. This seemed odd, so I did sprinkle a bit over the top of mine just before putting it in the oven. I shoved a few slivers of garlic around the bone too. But of course Julia was originally using the famous French "pré-salé" lamb, which I used to think meant "presalted", but actually means "salt-meadow", the seaside meadows where the lambs graze, absorbing the taste of salt with their grass and herbs. Harvey and I had it once for lunch in Rouen, and it was superb.
            Her recipe is for a 6 pound leg, roughly 2.75 kg, but as I've often found it takes longer in the oven for a roast than she says, even though it's on fan-forced, I thought it would be safe to use the lower times she gives for my 2.48 kg leg (starting at room temperature).  But since you do initially sear it at 230C for 15 minutes, unlike the mustard-coating recipe, that obviously makes it cook quicker for the rest of the time at 180C. An hour was plenty - in fact I would have been happy to have it a little pinker (although I think my neighbour probably preferred the way it turned out, well towards medium rather than rare, though still nice and pink in its deeper recesses). I've left her timings in their original form for the larger leg, but if you're using it for a smaller one, check with a meat thermometer after it's been in the 180C oven for 45 minutes, rather than leaving it for an hour.

Roast leg of lamb - Gigot rôti
(From Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1)

This is for a leg weighing 6 pounds, approximately 2.7 - 2.8 kg bone in.
Remove the lamb from the fridge an hour before cooking. Trim off as much fat and silverskin as possible, and wipe it dry with paper towels.

Preheat the oven to 230C. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter with 2 tablespoons of oil in a glass jug in the microwave, Brush the lamb all over with this mixture.
Place it on a rack in a roasting tin just large enough to fit it. Place the tin in the upper third of the preheated oven. For fan-forced, turn the heat down to 220C. After 5 minutes, turn it over and baste it again with the leftover butter and oil.
Repeat after another 5 minutes, and again after another 5 minutes. Leave the roast after the final turn with its fatty top side uppermost.
Take out the lamb and turn the heat down to 180C. Strew the roughly chopped pieces of 1 large carrot and 1 large onion and a few cloves of peeled garlic in the bottom of the pan. Set lamb in middle of oven and roast till done, with teh correct temperature showing on the meat thermometer. Basting is not necessary.

Cooking times:
Rare: 15 mins searing plus 45 mins to 1 hour at 180C. Juices run rosy red.
Medium: 15 mins searing plus 1 hour to 1 hour 15 mins at 180C. Juices run pale rose.
(Julia does not deign to give any timing for well done, that would be unthinkable.)

Season the lamb with 1 tsp salt and 1/4 ts pepper, and place it on a hot platter. Leave it to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes before carving slices across the grain. (You can wrap it loosely in foil and leave it for longer.)

To make the sauce: Remove the rack from the tin, and spoon out the cooking fat. Pour in a cup of stock (I use miso) and boil rapidly, scraping up the juices and scraps and mashing the vegetables into the stock. Taste for seasoning. Just before serving, strain into a hot sauceboat, pressing the juices out of the vegetables. Add any juices which may have escaped from the resting roast.
(Or simply discard the veges, add red wine to the pan and boil that with the scraped up juices and scraps and a dash of  soy sauce, taste, then strain.)

Be sure to serve the lamb on hot plates to stop the fat congealing.

I found this entertaining gem online: Julia Child visits 16 master chefs in their own kitchens.

The perfect potato cake

For this weekend I wanted a new potato recipe - something different to go with the salmon fillet I planned to cook for Sunday lunch. Gratin seemed a bit too rich and heavy, mashed potato a bit ordinary. Potato cakes or fritters would be nice, but tricky to make on time for six.
           So I started hunting through my cookbooks, beginning with Lois Daish's Dinner at Home and A Good Year. And straight away, I found exactly what I was looking for: Baked Grated Potato Cake.
"This Russian recipe makes a potato cake which is lighter than most, and is crisp on the outside and moist and tender inside."
            It looked quite easy, but as the lunch was for a special occasion and I didn't want to mess it up, I thought I'd better do a test run first. Of course I forgot to take its picture before we ate it (having a very tall, hungry son waiting for dinner to appear does tend to make me forget these things). So I waited to post this until I'd made it again for lunch today, doubling the original quantities.
            It turned out extremely well (thank goodness, because Lois herself was one of the guests). It was a bit too fiddly to make on the day itself, so I made it on Saturday and it warmed up very nicely for Sunday. It's a sort of giant latke, perfect for a tableful of people; but unlike many other grated potato cakes I've eaten and sometimes made, there's no risk of the potato being a bit undercooked.

Baked grated potato cake
From Lois Daish, Dinner at Home (1993)

2 Tbsp butter
1 medium-sized onion
750g potato (Agria work very well)
1/2 cup milk or cream (I used 1/4 cup of each)
2 eggs
salt and pepper
another 1 Tbsp butter

Butter a baking tin about 20 cm in diameter. Preheat the oven to 180C.
Finely chop the onion, melt the butter in a frying pan, and gently fry the onion for at least 10 minutes until it is golden brown.
While the onion is frying, peel the potatoes and grate them coarsely in a food processor or by hand.
Tip the potatoes into a large bowl and fill with cold water. Use your hands to swoosh the potato around and wash off excess starch. Drain the potato and wring dry in a cloth.
Rinse and dry the bowl, put the potato back into it and tip in the cooked onion and butter. Mix gently.
Separate the eggs and add the yolks to the potato mixture, together with the milk and/or cream. Season well with salt and pepper and mix gently.
Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks and fold them in.
Pile the mixture into the buttered baking tin and dot the top with the remaining 1 Tbsp butter.
Bake at 180C for about 40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the potatoes are tender.

This photo is of the double-quantity version, which would easily serve eight - the original serves four.

So what else did we have? We started with crepes filled with creamed mushrooms and bacon. With the grilled salmon and potato we had a cos lettuce and avocado salad with lime dressing. For dessert, what's probably my favourite cake: Claudia Roden's orange and almond dessert cake, with pureed NZ dried apricots and cream with saffron syrup.

Birthday drinks party food

My neighbour, distinguished historian Frances Porter, turned 90 recently, so I thought we should have a few drinks with friends to celebrate - especially as my birthday is coming up as well. So on Saturday Frances supplied the bubbly and cheese, and I made the rest of the party food (except for the birthday cake, which two of her longstanding friends had insisted on bringing).
        I'm not very good at nibbles - when Ruth Pretty's DomPost column is about elegant party food, my eyes tend to glaze over.  But this time I knew I needed to Make an Effort. I wanted to come up with a good variety of finger food that was easy to make, easy to eat and had distinctive flavours that were not too strong (Frances doesn't like chili, for example).
        So down to Moore Wilson's I went. If you were so minded, you could just cruise round the frozen food shelves in their big grocery section and collect various packets of ready-made morsels, from samosas to stuffed mushrooms. But as scores of end-of-day downtown events over the years have taught me, most of them are not really very nice to eat. And Frances would definitely not be impressed - as I explained in my memoir, she has a most discerning palate. On the other hand, I didn't want to make everything from scratch, and a few judiciously chosen short-cuts can be a big help.
        What I took home worked very well: frozen blinis, pumpernickel bread, and small filo tart cases, along with an on-special tub of pesto, small-party-sized packs of salami and smoked salmon pieces, sour cream, horse-radish, small tomatoes and mushrooms.
         The day before, I made the filo case fillings: creamed mushroom (Frances loves mushrooms) and egg with parsley and chives, with a recipe from one of Lois Daish's classics, A Good Year (see below).  On Saturday all I had to do, not long before the party,  was:
- lay out the cheese and crackers;
- lay out the pumpernickel and top it with pesto, salami and sliced tomato;
- defrost the blini, mix horseradish into the sour cream, and put neat blobs of it on them, topped with the salmon (I made more of these because they're so popular);
- fill half the filo cases with the warmed mushroom mix, and the rest with the egg mix (cold, but taken out of the fridge a bit earlier). This has to be done just before people arrive, so they don't go soggy.

Doesn't sound like much, but it did all take a while. I timed it quite well - I was just finishing the egg cases when Frances arrived.  It all tasted good, nearly everything got eaten - including the deliciously retro sultana birthday cake - and we all had a very good time.

Chopped egg filling with parsley and chives
Lois Daish's recipe puts this into little cheese pastry cases, rather than filo, and I will make those properly another time. Any leftover egg makes excellent sandwiches next day. This amount fills 12 pastry tart cases or 30 small filo cases.

3 eggs, hard-boiled and peeled
squeeze of lemon juice
1/2 (half) c cream
salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste
finely chopped parsley and chives

Put the hard-boiled eggs on a board and chop into little pieces. Put the cream in a bowl, add a squeeze of lemon juice and whisk briefly until it is still soft and floppy. Add the chopped eggs and season with salt, pepper and cayenne. Stir in the parsley and chives.
This will keep, covered, in the fridge overnight - just give it a good stir next day before using.

I forgot to take a photo of my filo cases, so these are the tarts from Lois's book. And I should have cut the pumpernickel in half again, to match the size of everything else. Next time...

No-waste curry: Using up veges and doing good

A while ago I visited Kaibosh, the wonderful Wellington food rescue group. It collects various kinds of leftover food and redistributes it to organisations who can use it. Currently they have 24 donors, from Countdown to People's Coffee, and the food goes out to 27 groups, from Wellington Women's Refuge to Lower Hutt Food Bank.
          They're now inviting people to "Make a Meal in May to share with the people you care about, and raise funds for Kaibosh at the same time". Find out how here.
           The main kind of food they rescue (over 60% of their collection) is fruit and vegetables. These also feature strongly on a really useful site, Love Food Hate Waste, dedicated to helping us all cut down on food waste at home.
            So this week I thought I'd update a remarkably simple, healthy recipe that I posted back in 2012, because it's a terrific way to use up as many veges as possible in a very tasty way - and it would make a great dish to serve at a May Meal for Kaibosh.

Vegetable Curry
(adapted from Doris Ady's recipe in The Sultan's Kitchen - for the full story, go here.)

Basic vegebtables:

1 large firm fresh potato (any kind)

1 large brown onion

1 large red, yellow or green pepper

To these you can add pieces of kumara, pumpkin, parsnip, carrot, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, green beans, as well as peas and sweetcorn kernels - whatever you have on hand and want to use up.  If you increase the quantity of veges, increase the spices proportionately.

Peel the potatoes (and other root vegetables) and cut them into cubes about 1.5cm square. (no need to be exact - it's jsut a matter of keeping them all roughly the same size and making sure the pieces won't take too long to cook.)

Peel and thinly slice the onion.

Deseed and slice the pepper.

Cut veges such as cauli and broccoli into flowerets. (If you're feeling really anti-waste, peel the thick main stalk and cut it into chunks too.) Slice green beans thickly..

Spices and liquid:

1 mild red chili (use a hotter one, if you like it, or dried chili flakes instead)

1 cm length of a thick piece of fresh ginger

1 cinnamon stick

1-2 tsps turmeric

(If you want a stronger curry flavour, you can add 1-2 tsps of a good brand of mild curry powder s well. Chefs would not approve, but too bad.)

1 tsp belacan or blachan (dried shrimp paste)

(You can buy this in Asian food shops. It smells very pungent, so once you've opened it, keep it firmly wrapped up in the fridge. It seems to stay perfectly okay to use for a long time, and gives the curry a totally distinctive flavour - but you don't need much! And it will still taste okay without this - or try a dash of fish sauce instead.)

2 cups of  chicken or vegetable stock (you can use stock cubes, but miso paste plus water is better, or proper stock)

Deseed and finely chop the chili (then wash your hands).

Finely mince together the peeled garlic and ginger (or use a food processor).

Put all the veges and all the spices into a deep saucepan. Add the stock - the liquid should almost cover the veges.

Bring to the boil, cover and simmer until the vegetables (especially the potatoes) are cooked but not disintegrating.

To finish:

1 small tin or half a larger tin of coconut cream

juice of 1 large lemon

salt

finely chopped parsley

Add the coconut cream to dissolve in the curry, and reheat gently.

Add salt and lemon juice to taste. (I like quite a lot of juice. Lime juice is even better.)

Before serving, sprinkle with chopped parsley.

To go with this:

A big bowl of rice (basmati and brown rice are both good), and quartered hard-boiled eggs. If you like them, add some of the side dishes that make curry so good - chutneys, sambals, yoghurt or raita, lime pickle, poppadums or naan bread. 

         This is so easy to make, and with no fat and lots of veges, really healthy too. Like most curries, it's even better the next day. You can also turn any leftovers into a delicious soup.