High Tide Tea

When one holds a High Tide tea - as you do - there are certain visitors who must be expected, and they didn't disappoint.

Maintenance session at the rowing club turned into a bit of a do. Shared breakfast...yum!

Those Apple Strudel scones from Baker's Delight were awesome - cinnamon and sugar, lovely apple flavour.
Bacon. Maple Syrup. French toast. Orange Juice. Fresh coffee. Fruit. Luxury.

 Porridge with Evan's amazing stewed rhubarb

No rowing today, but who could resist coffee in a great big mug down on the water-line with scones and lashings of butter?

 The date scones are pretty darned good too...

Membrillo - Quince Paste

Why why why did I not share this at the time.... made it just before Easter when quinces were in the shops - they're not now though!
This traditional Italian/Spanish paste is nice nice nice - deliriously amazingly delectable with a strong cheese.

Take your so-ugly-they're-beautiful quinces and cover with water

Boil them until the skins crack. At this stage they're easy to peel, and you can take the skins off when they're cool enough, and remove the pips and cores.

Boil again until soft.

Now strain off the water, puree the fruit and add the same quantity of sugar - weight for weight.

Slowly bring back to the boil while stirring to make sure the sugar is all dissolved.

You need to let this cook now for ages - let's say an hour but it may be longer. Stir occasionally. It changes slowly from a light beige colour to a strong pinky red and gets very thick.

Once you think all the moisture has boiled away, pour it into a baking-paper lined tin. Some people now bake this on low heat for another hour to make sure it's going to set.
I was over it by then - ours is set just enough but gosh it's good... I wrapped it in several blocks in baking paper and it keeps in the fridge for ages. If you let it. I didn't.

Goody goody strudel

I have news from a very good source who tells me that Baker's Delight have a new kind of scone (Apple Strudel - sounds good!) on the market, which might prompt me to hold a High Tide Tea at the rowing club. I've tried their scones before and though mine are pretty good - theirs are actually better. And quicker. Can't go past a good date scone on a wintry morning at dawn. I'm assuming that cinamon and apple versions of this will have a similar appeal, no?

But only with enough butter to see where your teeth have been...

I've been asked to review them - let's see next week!
And watch this space for a chance to win your very own Baker's Delight vouchers.

Bambi and Sweep

A weekend at Uruti Valley last weekend for Stew and his boy-mate McBrett whereupon the valley was deafened with gunshots and one bambi succumbed. Along with a goat which I've named after our childhood pet.

Alan is very kindly butchering and boning and very soon now you'll have some views of goat sausages and venison shanks casserole.

Tip Top is my hero

Imagine the brain who could combine All Blacks, icecream and Hokey Pokey.
Now imagine the icecream itself, and ask yourself - would I want shares in that?!
The answer for me, is Yes please...

and thank you, Tip Tiop. You're onto a winner there. Love the creamy caramel centre, love how I can win another one (and I did!)

Whakatane Picnic, Riverside

Easter time and a row along the Rangitaikei River near Thornton in the Bay of Plenty. We headed out with several boats and aimed for Edgecumbe.
Eight km's later, we arrived at a paddock and were greeted with...

What a spread! We added our Easter buns and then tucked in. One of the best fruit cakes I've ever eaten, no photo for you but here's the recipe:
1kg very moist fruit
soaked overnight in 2 cups fruit juice
The next morning, add 2 cups of flour and 2 tsp baking powder, stir and bake.
Yes, that is stunning in its simolicity. And in honourof simplicity, I will NOT answer any questions about temperature, size of tin, length of cooking time. Let's go with our instincts o this one - it's cooked when it smells divine, the oven needs to be moderately hot, and just use a tin you have!

Easter brings a workout

A group of us including some of my favourite people were lucky enough to get a few days away at gorgeous Ohope for Easter. Of course, home made Easter buns were on the menu, and Adie was the one nominated to get the workout.

Two hundred kneads.

 Temperature's rising

 Paste on top - large crosses

Delicious!

Recipes online in their droves... just want to share pictures really.

Indian in the countryside

This dinner happend a few weeks back but not to waste the photos - and the lovely company. Caro cooked, superbly as always, and came up with this marvellous array of food.

I think Indian must be almost my favourite - after dessert...
Caro made verything right down to the naan.

My next mission -  to make my own peshwaari naan.

A little bit of jelly goes a long way

and there's a jar of each going to Rotorua for Ann - the donor of the grapes.

Simmer your fruit, stalks and all, with a little water. Make sure it's well and truly cooked down. It just needs to simmer gently for around an hour. Get some muslin from the hardware or fabric shop and pour the fruit into 2 layers of it. Do have a bowl underneath or it all goes down the plughole.... Tie the muslin up, not squeezing the fruit but you need to contain it. Then find a way to suspend the bag over the bowl so it can hang there for several hours or overnight.
In the morning throw away the fruit (don't squeeze it first) and measure the juice into a pot. For every 600ml add something like 1- 1 1/2 cups sugar (slightly less for tart apples). Add the sugar before you heat the juice for better results. Bring to the boil while stirring to dissolve the sugar then boil it rapidly for about 10-15 minutes.

Do you know how to test for setting? Drop a small amount onto a cold saucer and push it with your finger - if it's ready little wrinkles will form. (On the jelly not your finger dummy..)

Now bottle it in sterilised jars. I usually have mine heating in the oven while I'm making the jelly.

(See sugar amounts and setting guides below)

Fruits with enough pectin to jell easily when cooked are blackberry, plum, gooseberry, apple, raspberry and grape. (Wild grapes jell better than tame ones). Pectin levels drop as fruit ripens so try to gather mid-ripe fruit. But don't let it stop you!
To achieve proper proportions of pectin and acidity and to add flavour to the jelly, different fruits can be mixed. Some good combinations are crab apple with grape, currant with raspberry, gooseberry with raspberry, tart apple with plum and tart apple with quince. You can add 1 tablespoon of orange, lime or lemon juice per cup of juice to make it jell better.

The amount of sugar you add does depend on the pectin level and the way to test is to add 2 tsp methylated spirits to 1 tsp juice. If low in pectin, the mixture will clump in little blobs. If medium, 2 or 3 blobs, and if high then you'll have one big jelly blob. The higher the pectin content, the more sugar you need.

Just quickly - Shirley's Kitchen - er, yum

Had visitors the other night and they brought with them this divine fig and walnut log

...made by a friend of theirs in the South Island. Shirley Bradstock of Shirley's Kitchen.
Look them up, see where you can get some and go there. Go now!


Well, what are you waiting for!? Go when I tell you to...

Goodness of friends

Thanks Pete
The fish pie is in the post

Had a kahawai delivered from his stocks and what else can you do with that...

along with the Feijoa and Ginger chutney from the fallen feijoas

Grapes of abundance in Roto-vegas

Love these unexpected deliveries of home-grown goodness. No spray, she said (other than the neighbour who might visit them in the moonlight...) still - a good wash will fix that

Grape jelly underway as we speak...
Had to make a white one and a black - I'm already imagining the colour
Thanks Ann!

we need one of these Simon

Okay Simon and Kirsty here's a project that you'd like

and here's my challenge to you
DO IT AS WELL AS THESE PEOPLE!

Second Bite

Whip over to Melbourne and have a read about this awesome project.
This follows on the heels of some reading I was doing about the wastage of food we in the first world allow/cause - what you will. Supermarkets could easilty be blamed but then we also are precious about our choices. Did you know that huge torrents of food are rejected because of size, shape and colour? I must do some more research on this but I can already feel myself gettting angry.
Anyway here's a couple of places to look further if this is of interest to you.

Yay Brett's cook book's here

What a fantastic job you've done with this Brett!
I'm green with envy...

...and what a generous thing, to add a page from the other 11 Series 1-ers.

Thank you, it's going onto my recipe book shelf right now!

Apple forest

Look what I did with some black and red food colouring and some beautiful little apples

Dinner tonight at Adie's with Grant doing his Italian meatballs and I get to take dessert. Get your false teeth ready girls!

For the toffee:1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/2 cup water, plus 1 tbsp vinegar. Simmer till sugar is dissolved, boil for about 8 minutes then add colouring. Roll the apples in it.

Eat and enjoy!

Master Chef Series 2 coming up 20 February TV One

Sounds like the date is out... I read it in the Sunday Star Times.... and the publicity machine is going into action. Check the facebook page for news as it happens.

I read a bit from new judge dude Josh Emmet saying that the new lot of contestants are better than the last! Huh! Charming... not that I take offence easily and he could well be right. I trust none of them make Chicken and Raspberry Tarte Tatin...

Anyway I had fun while it lasted, and I was given a copy of the cook book in the process! What-ho... might have to try some of those recipes! Actually I'm looking forward to Brett's new book which should be along in a month or 2. Aww it's just because I might have a recipe in there... yes I know, I'm shallow. No surprise there then.

Charlie Royal

Love the name...

Charles hails from my neck-of-the-woods, Rotorua. He's a celebrity Maori chef dude.
Ann sent me a pack of his KawaKawa herb, which smells delicious. Might combine it with the next fresh snapper haul.

Go have a little look at his website. I think his range and his tours sound amazing. What a great concept, so pleased to see someone commercialising this Maori food idea with taste (get it? Taste... hahah) and sensitivity.

too little too late...

apologies are not my thing... do I owe anyone this blog? No. And I don't feel that I let myself down..... it's not that I'm doing nothing out here! Just have a look at that excavation in progress, and think about how that's my usual work space in there. Not this week though! Rising Damp - funny maybe, but don't laugh near me. There we were sitting in our lovely carpeted new office-in-the-garage and then one day last week, wet feet. And the next day, wetter feet. Yes the rain had been pelting down but 3 days later no difference. So that afternoon we shifted the entire office out - 4 work stations plus the carpet. Same afternoon we went fishing (Anniversary Day regatta) and broke down in the middle of the shipping lane. Amongst the regatta, the tugs and the 1m swell. Nothing a tow from the Coastguard wouldn't fix though.

Two days later Stew (Engineer man) brought in the heavy machinery and there we were with dirt and dust and mess and noise and the whole house shaking. Carpet piled up in the main bedroom. Two work stations in another. Me in the third. And Em working on the kitchen table.

Therefore no apologies owed and none given - but I had the weekend in Rotorua and the morning that I left Stew was preparing the latest harvest from the sea.

Not only had he been for a little bike ride Saturday morning, but also spent a half day fishing with clients the day before. No break-down that day!

Charlie (cat) has decided she loves fresh snapper. So have I.