Dan Lepold is a baker that we rate very highly, and have a couple of his books.

I also happen to have a great love for good hot cross buns, and rue the fact that Dean is no longer at La Boulangerie, becos his hot cross buns used to be superb.

Last year I made some of my own - but in my typically disorganised fashion, I can't remember just what book I sourced the recipe from. Have a feeling it was out of a magazine, and trying to find that again will be like the needle in the proverbial haystack.

But while I ponder which I should use, I thought this an interesting article on what I should be aspiring to achieve...

This link is to a blog I check in on periodically. The author cooks in both the US and England, and she makes some interesting points sometimes.

I have mentioned previously, my frustrations with some of the attitudes of young chef trainees who are somehow encouraged to believe, that a quickly achieved qualification somehow magically caterpaults them into the world inhabited by the likes of Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver.

Cooking is in fact a craft learnt over time - a lot of time, which requires a huge amount of imput - and this blog captures some of the hugeness that is required rather well I thought.

( I couldn't link onto the exact blog alone - so just for future reference the particular one to read is dated,  24 Feb 2010)

Courteney is currently in Wellington, racing in the 5 day international Womens Tour of New Zealand. To our enormous pride, she was picked to replace Alison Shanks who pulled out of the National Team, and she is currently living, eating and racing with some of her cycling heros ( all the rest, older women who race professionally overseas) - and no doubt absorbing huge amounts of information and advice along the way... Not to mention just the sheer experience of cycling at that level.

She's doing fantastically well so far, and we hold our breaths day by day, becos things in cycling can change radically from one day to the next, but just wanted to share with you this photo of the NZ team riding at the front of the pelaton at the start of the Day 2 Road race. We haven't seen her in the NZ kit yet cos she didn't get it until she arrived in Wgtn.

Thats our girl on the far right of the photo:

( I'm crying! Shit!)

The NZCT New Zealand National Team pose for a photo at the head of the peloton.

 I've been contacted by a couple of people who have read the previous sponge recipe and said it is exactly the one that they have used for years of baking.

Curiously all of those people lived the earlier part of their lives in the Waikato, which makes me wonder if the recipe was one published in one of the Women Country Insitute type cookbooks, that usually had infallible baking recipes.

A dear friend Gail did mention that that with todays lino in kitchens, dropping a hot pan on the floor may not be such a good idea, ( and trust me, she knows more than most about flooring!)  and she has found that  a tap on a wooden board both before and after the sponge goes into the oven, suffices.

Which is what I'm going to try!

I've been hovering around the computor - flicking backwards and forwards from the restaurant for the last couple of hours waiting for the results of Day 2 of the Womens Tour of NZ to be posted. We'd spoken to Courteney earlier, but Rick wanted the results to see how she was going in the overall scheme of things.

Cycling results take a bit of understanding, and he's currently pouring thru them as I caught up on emails. This link was sent me by a good customer, who'd just read it and thought we might be interested.

I thought tjhe restaurant critic who wrote the article,  sounded like a grumpy old man, but a grumpy old man who's eaten in enough restaurants to know what he likes and what he doesn't. And interestingly I agreed with him on virtually every point - which is unusual for me, becos normally, what people do and don't like in restaurants is so variable and so up for personal interpretation, that its virtually impossible to achieve unanimity.

But in this case I ticked each box!

In one of the cookschools last week we got into a discussion that I'd provoked, by saying that in my recent reading about baking techniques, it had  been explained that its better to use granulated sugar, than it is castor sugar. I'd sat up and taken note, becos for years we've been telling people that we use castor sugar in all our sweet work, simply becos its convenient to store one type of sugar.

According to the cookbook I was reading at the time though, granulated sugar is better becos it has a larger crystal, and when it is creamed with butter, this larger crystal creates larger air pockets, which in turn creates more lift in the baking cake.

We haven't tested the theory as yet and done a direct comparison - but just as we're beginning to be more selective with our flours, now that we understand that flour for bread is different to flour for light pastries, so it may be that we decide to revert to granulated for our baking.

Its what my mother used to use.

I added the comment in the class that I am hopeless at sponges - having never made a decently light one yet, and there was an ensuing discussion about the necessities of a good sponge.

Today Jacci, one of the attendees, dropt us in a sponge - of infinite lightness, and I'm going to have to take it over to the boys in the kitchen soon, becos I've already had 2 slices, and am struggling to resist a third. It is a perfect sponge...
Rick is out on a club ride though, and he will be less than impressed if he comes home to find that its been whisked away and scoffed, so maybe I'll just have to be strong and ride out the temptation!

Below is the recipe that Jacci included with the sponge - she said its a 50 year old one, from a lady called Marie Kidd in Te Aroha...

( And I am passing on the recipe as I recieved it- which given its age, means imperial measurements I'm afraid!)

6 ozs sugar ( I'll ask her when I ring whether she used granulated or castor)
2 tblsp water
4 eggs seperated, size 6
6 ozs cornflour
1dsp flour
1 heaped tsp Baking powder

Beat whites until stiff.
Boil sugar and water and while still very hot add to beaten egg whites.( Drizzle near beaters turning bowl)
Add yolks and beat well.
Fold in flour, BP and cornflour sifted together.
Cook in greased and lined 8" round tins.
Bake 350o to 375o approx 20 mins, until springs back to touch


No advice on whether to drop the tins when removing them from the oven, but the general consensus in the class was that we all remember our mothers and grandmothers dropping tins on the flour. Just not sure if I'll be able to bring myself to do it - if I get a lovely risen sponge for once.!

I'm just heating up the oven to cook a tomato tart for lunch. Each trip down to the vegetable patch at the moment is yielding copious quantites of tomatoes, and I'm having to come up with inventive ways of using them. Not, I might add, that I'm adverse to having them very simply with just a sprinkling of salt and splosh of balsamic on good bread. But we've had that for lunch repeatedly over the last few days - so trying to be a little more original today.

Oven's on to get good and hot, becos with our cream cheese pastry it needs to go into a really hot preheated oven otherwise the butter tends to melt and run out before the glutens get a chance to set - and runny butter means ovens that need cleaning, and that is one job I'll make a determined effort to avoid!

Going up the Mount this morning I decided that I should write about Bev May, Courteneys cycling coach, becos she is an extraordinary woman - one of those special people who underpin sport in all codes right across NZ, but never for financial gain or personal selfaggrandisement. They do it simply for the love of the sport.  Courteney has just raced in the Bev May tour - a 2 day womens event that the Morrinsville cycling club put on to honour Bev, who has been a stalwart of NZ cycling since the 50s.

When she first started racing in 1958, she needed a special license to be able to race against the men - with no other women cycling back then, if she didn't race the men, she wouldn't have had any races. Her exploits are legendary within cycling circles, and her scrapbooks  of newspaper cuttings that Courteney brought home last year to go thru, reveal a time in NZ history when cycling was  huge.

In 1988 a serious accident put paid to her racing career, but she has continued to be heavily involved in the sport - especially with coaching young up and coming riders. No less a cyclist than Julian Deans was coached by her in his junior years.

She has been Courteneys coach for a number of years now - and Rick has sat comfortably in the background, watching the relationship between the two of them develope and thrive.

She's totally old school - you get good by doing the miles! She brooks no dissent, and gives out few compliments, and has been absolutely brilliant for our daughter, who requires much more cossetting in general from her father.

The Bev May Tour has been an annual event since 1990, and one of Courteneys mentors, Sally Fraser won that first Tour, and comes back every year to compete.

The list of previous Tour winners reads like a who's who of top NZ female cyclists - Sally Fraser, Sarah Ulmer, Melissa Holt,  Marina Duvjnak.

Courteney had a great tour over the weekend - and for once I watched Bev show some emotion as she came over to hug her. Rick even got a hug after prize giving - and was told that she thought Courteney could go all the way.

 Two very emotional parents drove back to Tauranga, feeling enormously proud to their daughter, and full of gratitude to the special woman who has so absolutely been the right person in the right place for Courteney...

Father and daughter discussing tactics before the road race on Day 2...

Courteney taking out the first QOM - the spotted jersey she's wearing shows that shes the current Queen of the Mountain - something she retained on Day 2.

Sonya Waddell, the eventual overall winner in yellow jersey, discribed Courteney in her acceptance speech as her little nemesis, and someone to watch becos she had the makings of a future champion.

Criterion Stage - officials including Bev stand by the sprint finish as the cyclists do the circuit.

Hannah, whos a good cyclist in her own right - but also manages to fit in kayaking, and running and multi sport and...- came to watch her sister in the criterion, and was heard to mutter that she might do the Tour next year..

She took out the sprints...

And at the end, the normally, quite matter of fact Bev, gave her not one but 2 hugs - which I missed becos I was so shocked I didn't think to have the camera ready, and then proceeded to launch into advice on the major Tour of Wellington that Courteney leaves for tomorrow.

According to Bev's principles - its self indulgent to feel sorry for yourself when things go wrong - you're allowed 10 mins after a race but after that you are required to snap out of it; and likewise, we're not allowed to get too celebratory when things go well.

It's all good, but whats next on the agenda...!!!

And thats why I now take a camera and capture some of these moments, becos time is swinging by so fast, and its hard to believe how far we've journeyed with these 2. I have a photo of Courteney in her first ever cycling race, which I'll unearth one day - and the contrast between that lacking in confidence, plump, shy, preteen, and this streamlined mean machine that we have now is simply huge.

Takes my breath away really.....and it really doesn't matter where it all leads too - people who know what they're talking about,  are starting to predict big things for Courteney - but I figure that at this stage that doesn't really matter, becos what has been achieved so far is simply amazing, and so to my mind, what comes next is all pure bonus.

 This is a link to the latest Michael Ruhlman blog, in which he ponders on why he gets so much satisfaction from the act of cooking, and his resoning, and some of the following responses from people underscore for me, exactly what going into the kitchen at home is all about.

And it is exactly that sense of pleasure that we try to capture in the cookschools - people see good food being prepared; they get to listen to the chit chat that goes along with that; they eat it in the company of chatty relaxed people, and then, hopefully they go away enthused..

But now I have to head over to a busy Saturday nite service at the restaurant ( busy is good!), and the type of cooking that goes on in the restaurant kitchen, over the next 4 hours is the sort of cooking that only a special few put their hands up for. It is not relaxing or cathartic. It is presurised, full on and intense - and I'd far rather be out front!

I've done my pottering in the kitchen ( at home ) today, while Rick was over in Morrinsville with Courteney. Made some chicken stock, a sort of paella for Hannah and I for lunch, a chocolate and banana loaf that I'll take over to Morrinsville tomorrow, when I join the others - and the hugest dish of muesli for the girls to take back to their flats.

Courteney thinks Josh's muesli at Slowfish is the best, so I asked him for some pointers, only ever having made the bircher style muesli before - something that niether of my daughters are fans off! - and I've created this concoction based on his directions.

That is the kind of cooking that I enjoy - that gives me sustenance and enjoyment, all rolled up together . What the chefs do in a professional kitchen is a whole different level all together.

Both Rick and I really enjoy eating Indian food, even though its one cuisine that we've never learnt much about.

Many years ago we went to a cookschool at The Epicurean Workshop in Auckland, where David Thompson who's a world reknown expert on Thai food,  totally engrossed us, in a discussion about spices that we'd never heard of.

Rick ordered a number of them from Wah Lees - and from that experience the mussaman curry found its way onto the restaurant menu, and we continue to sell the paste thru Somerset at Home.

We've never gone back to preground packaged spices, becos we learnt that the flavour differential, when you roast the whole spice and grind it as required,  is so profound, that the effort is more than worthwhile.

Indian cooking uses alot of the same spices - so their names are no longer alien to us, but we've never had the opportunity to explore too far into that food realm.

We do however very much enjoy eating out at Indian restaurants - theres something about the style of easy, cheap, shared plates, that makes it a lovely relaxed  evening, on occasion.

For years we've frequented Little India down on The Strand, and last time we were heading in that direction Hannah suggested we try "Talk of India ( 356 Cameron Rd), becos the father of one of her friends had just bought it.

We've subsequently been back a couple of times, becos we were so impressed with the food, and thought Lena's dad and Aunt were just delightful people. Mr Patel showed Rick the kitchen - which brought back memories, becos we remember that restaurant being "Altons' when we first came to town, which along with La Salle and Olivers, were the other good restaurants, back in the mid 80's.

There weren't many ethnic restaurants around back then!

Its been thru a number of different guises since the mid 80s,  and we hadn't been back in years. But we will now certainly be going back more often now, becos the food has a depth of flavour that is simply delicious.

And I like delicious!

I am not inherently a fan of the classification of wine or restaurants into lists of the best - becos I have problems with the variability of the criteria used, and the type of people who set themselves up to pass judgement.

But having said that, I nonetheless keep an eye on such lists out of curiosity, and while I don't let it necessarily affect my own personal favourites  ( had a glass of the Te Whare Ra Pinot Noir last nite, when sitting down with friends,  and I reckon NZ pinots don't get too much better than that...), its always interesting gist for the mill. Something to mull over...

This list  categorises some NZ pinots into star ratings based on the consistency of their performance over the last few years, and makes for interesting reading I thought. I'm familiar with some but not all of the wines - and one of  my problems with such a list, is that some of the wineries mentioned, produce more than one pinot label.

Somerset at Home is designed to help people, who enjoy cooking, to eat good food at home. I understand that that may sound like a contradiction in terms, since all of the items available under the Somerset at Home label, have been prepared in the restaurant kitchen, to the same standards that we use for the food served in the restaurant, and if people are buying food we've prepared then they're not having to cook.

Our kitchen has done the hard work. Some of the items, like the vinegars and preserved lemons, are condiments - items that we use alot for flavour, but the rest of the product are actually dishes that have been prepped almost to  service level. Some, like the licorice icecream require no added effort, beyond maybe a splash of orange juice, and some like the twice baked cheese souffles, require a bit more input to get them to the table. But the ground work has been done.

And that is the simple philosophy behind the whole idea. People enjoy eating good food at home, but are often time poor, and don't always have the inclination to make everything from scratch. But if they have a jar of good quality pate in the fridge, or some slowbraised lamb shanks in the freezer, then putting together an easy meal, becomes an quick task. We provide the basics and they get to improvise and add as the whim takes them.

Its a combination I feel very comfortable about. We're not trying to supersede people in the kitchen; we're simply acknowledging that life can get busy and logistically it can be a big ask to make every meal from scratch. We know from comments made over the years in the cookschools, that alot of people don't want to put that much pressure on themselves, and I think that is perfectly understandable.

  A classic example of this is our cream cheese pastry - a light pastry that crosses over seamlessly from savoury to sweet dishes.

We've used it a number of times in cookschools over the years,  and given people the recipe, and even though it is considerably easier to make then true puff,  we still got asked many times, whether we could make it available for people to buy. There are alot of good cooks who don't like making pastry, we've discovered. So it became part of the Somerset at Home lineup, and in the last cookschool series, where Rick used it to make some savoury palmiers, we sold a huge amount of it frozen.
And to our delight, people keep coming back to stock up, becos they've discovered that having it sitting in the freezer, makes last minute cooking easy.

Which is precisely what we had intended.

As my tomatoes come onstream, I've been researching recipes to deal with the glut, and one that caught my eye this afternoon was a tomato tart - and it'll be cream cheese pastry that I'll be using for the base, becos its perfect for that kind of dish.

And along that same vein, one of the recipe websites that I get regular updates from, had a recipe for duck confit tossed with pasta. The sort of dish that appeals to me on so many levels, and a classic example of how having some confit duck legs in the fridge/freezer, makes a quick meal so easy.

We have done confit duck legs in a cookschool - and again discovered that a number of the participants while loving the flavour of the duck, would rather buy them already confited, then go thru the process themselves. So we now sell them. We go thru alot of duck in the restaurant, and as a result have alot of duck fat that gets rendered in the roasting process - so having surplus fat to cook the legs is never a problem.

We almost always have confit duck on the menu in same shape or form - its currently on as a salad entree, with green  olive relish and champagne vinaigrette - but this recipe in Simple Recipes, uses the duck meat in quite a different manner, as a hot dish with pasta, showing how versatile something like duck confit can be.

The recipe includes the method of confiting, but if you already have confit duck legs in the fridge, then you simply bypass that stage, and head straight to the sauce - thereby turning what could have been a protracted affair, into a couple of easy prep stages.

And it is that idea of using a base ingredient in a number of different ways, that I like so much about casual home cooking - having the flexibility to ver off on a tangent as some combination of flavours takes my fancy.

The possibilities really are limitless!.

In the years that I've been enjoying musing via this blog, I've never been tempted to relay recipes, even though one of the things I refer to the most, is the cooking of food.

The reason for this reluctance is that I don't feel qualified to do so - I am not a chef. I am an enthusiastic home cook, who by virtue of the restaurant business, gets to indulge her love of food, and to expand both my reading and my experimenting into places that the normally busy home cook wouldn't bother going.

And  becos I consider that I have a lifetime of knowledge to absorb regarding the huge field of food and wine, I am forever surrounded by cookbooks and magazines, or exploring the internet, and by small increments adding to my understanding.

Now that we live next door to the restaurant, and don't break up so much of our day in transit - travelling too and from home, and to and from picking the girls up from school, and their various events as we did for years - the amount of pottering around that I do in the home kitchen has grown exponentially, simply becos I have the time to do so. And that is a source of considerable pleasure to me, becos not only do I enjoy cooking for my family - but I also get real pleasure from the process of discovering new techniques and new flavours.

Rick seldom cooks in the home kitchen - he doesn't enjoy using domestic equipment, becos commercial equipment in general, is just so much more efficient.  So its a role that I naturally fill.

Although today he did make us both an omelet for lunch, and it was a seriously good omelet as his always are. I did make reference to the ones on NZ  Masterchef a couple of weeks ago, and he made a point that I thought perfectly encapsulated the difference between a chef and a cook. 'They were only given 3 minutes to make their omelets on the show, and I needed 3 minutes just to get the pan to the hot enough temperature, before I started cooking mine." Hmmm...

Occasionally in cookschools, while in reference to something Rick is doing, I may mention that I've discovered something at home, and I'm always intrigued that people seem to be genuinely interested in the how toos. It goes without saying now, that all cookschool attendees know that I always have a bowl of chicken stock sitting in my fridge, ostensibly to use for cooking, but  mainly as a comfort blanket, for those times when I need a refuge in a steaming mug of goodness.

One of the things thats evolved with that chicken stock is the fact that now when I heat it, I invariably add some kecap manis and seasame oil, becos they are a combination of flavours that I especially love, and they lift the stock into  the realms of heavenly both aroma wise and in taste.

People jot that down, and then I later get emails saying they're tried it - or as a combination over stir fried chicken, and think its a wonderful flavour - and I get to feel grateful that I've been able to pass on something that works for us, in a way that it is going to give other people pleasure.

So it is along that vein, that I've realised the blog gives me an opportunity to link to some of the recipes and ideas, that we enjoy - that aren't necessarily restaurant orientated - but which are all about good food.

Two interesting articles in The Guardian on the vexed subject of wine criticism - both from a different perspective, but both written by men who have the very serious qualification of an MW.

Tim Aitken argues that with the plethora of wines around in the market place now, people need guidance about what to choose, and look to the experts to provide some pointers.

Tim Hanni  on the other hand argues that alot of that guidance is entrenched snobbery - that makes people reliant on other peoples estimations, rather than their own palates.

I have witnessed alot of wine snobbery over the years - behaviour that I personally find somewhat distasteful, and for reasons I don't fully understand, the wine industry tends to attract more than its fair share of those sorts.

I guess I'm enough of a contrarian to not want to believe everything I'm told, and therefore my wine knowledge, such that it is now, has been built up over the years from a wide variety of sources.  And I certainly hope that just becos someone with letters after their name, tells me that something is good,  I won't unquestioningly accept that as fact, but will instead allow my own critical faculties to determine my own opinion.

But then wine doesn't intimidate me.- I guess I've been around the industry too long. Quite the contrary. I find it a fascinating subject - huge in both its diversity, and its ability to be different things to different people. Unlike a mathmatical equation, there is never one correct answer - both rather a countless array of possibilities.

All interesting....

I've just had a late lunch with Rick - tomatoes and basil and eggplant out of the garden, tossed quickly over heat and mixed with some pasta. Perfect flavours for a day like today. John had brought over a beetroot tart that he wants to special tonite, - the cream cheese pastry on the base with roasted beetroot and then some of Over the Moons fresh goats cheese - all a beautiful combination, and that'll be on the restaurant menu tonite.

I've just got back from going up the Mount - later in the day then I normally do, but had to get the newsletter folded this am, and then had some stuff at my desk to attend too. Rick and Courteney had headed out on a bike ride, and Hannah had gone over to Hamilton to pick up Andrew and head down to Wellington tonite - he's in a Coast to Coast team, and she's going down as support crew.

It was glorious over at the Mount - and the sun must have been exactly overhead, becos no matter which side I was on there was no shade, which is most unusual. Usually you get a shady patch somewhere - but headed for home feeling definitly scalded!

Intrigued to read in the latest Hospitality magazine that el bulli is closing for 2 years. el bulli is a spanish restaurant, judged most frequently over the last few years as being the best restaurant in the world, and the chef/owner Ferran Adri is one of the chefs at the forefront of the molecular gastronomy movement, a subject that we continue to mull over. It's closing apparently becos he is burnt out and needs a break, to refresh and recharge.
Fabulous concept I feel, but not one that we can afford to emulate.

However the point that most fascinated me was that the restaurant makes no money - this, remember is the best restaurant in the world, that you have to book at least a year in advance to get in to. A restaurant that seats about 45 people, and which only does one seating, and is only open 6 months of the year. ( The rest of the year the kitchen team work in a laboratory devising the  multi course menu for when they reopen.) To eat there costs an equivalent of $NZ500, and everyone I know who has had the experience says it is worth every cent. People eulogise.

But. The restaurant runs at a loss, and the money is made from the books, and his lectures around the world. He is a man much in demand.

Now I find that truly fascinating, becos it comes back to the conundrum that we have always had with Somerset and that is, that this style of restaurant is not, and never will be hugely profitable, becos we don't get the economies of scale from volume.

 A comparison I've often quoted is the clothing industry. Haute couture always makes a loss, and those ateliers are sustained by their pret-a-porter ranges. In other words, the exquisite clothes hand made by incredible craftspeople, and sold for thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, are not profitable. Amazing as it may seem.
To make money, all the great houses have a mass market line - people in the Main Street will buy Chanel sunglasses and pay a premium becos of the brand recognition of the name. And becos of the volume of the sunglasses that they sell all over the world, they make money- even though the clothes and other accessories are factory made, under markedly less salubrious conditions.

Small restaurants only have a certain number of seats that they can sell every nite. Alot of the formal restaurants in America work hard to have 2 sometimes even 3 seatings in a nite, so as to maximise the return from each seat in the restaurant. 3 different people sitting in the same seat over the duration of an evening, are going to spend approximately 3 times, what one person would. Once you've had your coffee, the chances are the restaurant is not going to make any further income from your presence, so they'd far rather you departed, and let some one else use the table. 

So for that reason, you're told the time to come, and also instructed on what time you will need to vacate the restaurant. Seatings start at 5.00pm and with some of the upmarket New York restaurants, they will still be seating people at 11.30pm.

Europe operates in a different style - people go to those restaurants to spend the evening to relax and indulge, the way dining out should be - and the idea of having to be in and out within a certain time frame, would be completely alien to them.

From what I read about el bulli, it certainly doesn't turn tables. But they charge alot of money for the priviledge of spending all nite at the table - and from what I understand the experience is so unique that the money is almost irrelevant.

But from my prespective what makes the fact there is no profit so interesting is that they are operating with a set cost structure, more so than most restaurants. They get the same number of patrons every nite, ( they're always full!) , all of whom are going to eat exactly the same food ( except for the odd vegan, or gluten allergy or...), so they know in advance, exactly what they are up for. The only variable really, would be the wines that people would choose to accompany their meals

By contrast, the reality for most restaurants is that numbers will vary on a nitely basis with no predictable pattern, and we have no way of knowing in advance what people are likely to order to eat off an a la carte menu. We may have a nite when everyone orders 3 courses, or it may be a nite when we sell very few entrees - you just don't know, and you have to be prepped and ready, just in case.

And being prepped and ready costs money in terms of labour and food materials. And that is why I hate a week when the level of busyness varies, becos it makes that whole process so much harder.

To my mind, it would be a dream to know exactly what to expect in terms of costs - but then I did ponder as I worked my way up the Mount,  whether that  could all get a bit predictable and possibly  boring. At least we have alot of variation - and we are never allowed the luxery of resting on our laurels, becos you just never quite know what is going to happen. And sometimes thats not a bad thing either, becos variety is supposed to be the spice of life! Hmm...