A sobering article on the current status quo in the NZ wine industry....

As people who have been coming to cookschools are aware, we have been using the ricotta, the yoghurt and the mozzarella from Clevedon Buffalo for some time now.

We were introduced to Helen at the Clevedon market last year, and she encouraged us to go out to the farm, meet her husband and have a look at the buffalo. As I mentioned in a blog written at the time, we drove away from the farm, hugely impressed by the vision of the two of them, and their tenacity to go the distance, and with a distinct sense of obligation to support them by buying what they produced.

That means that every week now, we take delivery of buffalo yoghurt, glorious little balls of mozzarela and also the ricotto.

This link is to a Country Calendar documentary on them, that I thought made fascinating viewing.

We don't carry enough stocks to onsell the products, but I know Culinary Council in Gate Pa do, as does Catharine at The Village Pantry in Te Puna.

The ricotta is drier than most of the others we've tried - we're using it in parcels at the moment, that are flavoured with thyme, and served with the mushroom soup in the restaurant, and as an accompainment to the quinoa salad in the current cookschool series.

The mozarella, Rick has used with caramalised onions on a cream cheese pastry base,  for the restaurant menu,  which has been enormously popular, and has been a nice side step from the more conventional treatment of matching mozarella with tomatoes and basi.

And the yoghurt, which is thick and unctuous and divine, gets used in anything we need yoghurt. Its simply the best.

Being not terribly experienced in the art of international travel, we were somewhat taken aback on our last big overseas trip when we flew from Paris to Cork on Air Lingus, and were expected to pay cash up front on board for any drinks we may have wanted. Not something we'd ever previously encountered.

But we had heard some horror stories from the people who joined us on the French cookschools, who'd flown somewhere in Europe on Ryan Air, and had discovered that the cheap airfares weren't quite as advertised.So for all those reasons I found  this video  which Gail has just sent me, absolutely hiliarious.

Could possibly be the Irish accents that does if for me...

Drove up to Auckland yesterday to watch Courteney race in the Auckland K1000, and the photo above is of the sprint finish between her and Melissa Holt - with the rest of the field some distance back.

Courteney won! - which is seriously cool, becos Melissa is a considerably older, more experienced rider, and in beating her, Courteney is proving to herself that she has more than made the step up from junior cycling last year to the elite level.

Her father said she could do it ( thats him in the back of the photo in the middle, having exhorted her to nail it as they sailed past) -  he's pretty accurately predicted each stage of her progress, and is suitably elated with what she achieved yesterday.

I am delighted for my daughter, becos I see the level of sheer hard work and committment that goes into her training, and it was with respect to that, that I simmered at the finish line, listening to the man on the microphone, pay only the most minimal, patronising attention to the womens race, while feeling the need to constantly update us on the progress of the male  A grade race. Like that was the only one that mattered.

I suspect he was beginning to wonder why the woman with the camera was glaring at him....

To them, I think it was. Chavinism is alive and well within sporting ranks in NZ, and the fact that the winning woman only gets a quarter of the payout of the successful man, just about prettty much sums it up for me.  Nothing but tokenism.

 I wonder where these people were when Sarah Ulmer was racing?

But I am not going to let those twats detract from what was a great performance. I know how hard she's working, and to see her get those results is a buzz for everyone around her.

And  then  to cap of an exciting weekend,  we've just heard today that Maddie Brunton, Courteneys closest rival and friend all thru junior cycling, who is now specialising in triathalons, has just won in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she's about to compete in the NZ team for the Worlds. Very cool!

Because of course girls can do anything!

I've just been over to the restaurant, where Roz and Hayley, have got the candles lit, the tables allocated, and the section sheet drawn up. All we need now are some customers!

So while I wait for the first tables to arrive, I thought I'd come back over to my computor to catch up on some emails that I didn't get too earlier today. Plus I wanted to download the photos I took of the doughnuts I made this afternoon. As you do..

All started from a query I got at the Sunday cookschool where I was asked if I watched the Australian Masterchef. I don't, but the lady who queried me said she really enjoyed it, and given she's someone who's opinion I rate, I thought I'd have a look this week. So far so good - and we were discussing it in the cookschool today, and I mentioned that I'd jotted down the ingredients for the doughnuts that they made in yesterdays show becos I'm a great lover of doughnuts, and said I was going to give it a go.

Fitted the rising of the dough around my walk, and timed things perfectly. And I have to say I thought the texture of the cooked doughnuts, which starts of as a very sloppy dough, was better than any recipe I've previously attempted.

One of the aspects I'm very much looking forward too about going back to Italy is the way their breakfasts consist of rushing into a cafe, grabbing a coffee and a pastry, which they devour standing, and then exit stage left at a rate of knots. We sat and watched the pantomine on more than one occasion quite entranced. I love pastry -love the leche frita which are currently on the restaurant menu  ( creme patissiere wrapped in very thin pastry, then deep fried and coated in sugar and cinnamon, and served with an apple and tamarillo compote). My idea of heaven - custard, pastry AND deepfried!

We are making deepfried  ricotta parcels in the current cookschool series, and fairly predictably someone always asks in a class if you can cook them in the oven rather than deep frying. With some people the concern over deepfrying has to do with health, and for others its just a fiddle, that makes the house smell and is something they can't be bothered doing.

I always beg to differ....

We tend to subscribe to the theory that a little of what you fancy occasionally isn't going to do any harm, and deep fried food, done properly so its crispy, with no oil having soaked in, will always appeal to me. Don't eat it every day but when I do eat I really enjoy it.

So it was with these doughnuts. And becos I  haven't done any deepfrying at home for awhile, it was an interesting exercise, becos I've been pretty casually telling people in the classes that you don't need a proper deepfryer to do it as long as you have a thermometer and stay within the 160-180o temperature range.

The oil got too hot on me for the first few, and had to have a couple of gos to get it in the correct range- the first few ended up in the worm bin - so not quite as easy straight off as I'd been implying I decided, but then I got the hang of it and  they coloured up beautifully and cooked thru easily. Rick and I managed to eat a couple each without too much difficulty,  and he took the rest of the dough over to the kitchen for the guys there to fry up before service, becos I don't think even I would be up to more doughnuts later tonite.

The recipe for those interested is dead simple:

440 mls milk, heated to blood temperature with 100 gm butter and 75 gm sugar, to which 2 tsps of dried yeast is stirred in, and when that bubbles after a few minutes, add 4 eggs. Beat that all together, then mix into 600gm flour, and combine.

Will be a sloppy mix. Cover with gladwrap and put in warm place to prove, approx 45 mins.

Heat oil to 160/170o and fry a few at a time. Combine some cinnamom with castor sugar and toss the warm doughnuts in the mix.

Make a small slit in each and pipe in some jam - raspberry of course.

No bad. Not bad at all...

Mine weren't the perfect round shape of his on TV last nite - I didn't quite get that technique mastered of sqeezing them thru cupped hands, but they still tasted good!

We had 3 each, not 2! But they were small - ish!

Rick is out on his bike ( again!), and I have a half hour or so to fill in before I take the dogs down below for their predinner exercise, so thought I'd write about this book, having just finally finished it.

It took awhile to read, becos as I mentioned in an earlier blog, the style is dense and the tone angry, and every so often I'd have to put it down and  mull over and digest what I'd read, before ploughing on.

The author was also the director for the movie that came out a few years ago, " Mondovino' and as a result of reading the book I've now bought the complete set of DVDs becos the original movie was about 2 hours long I think, so there was obviously a huge amount of material cut, becos in the DVD set, there's 10 hours of viewing. Will save that for the next rainy day, for which I probably won't have to wait long!

I loved it. But then I'm a naturally left leaning liberal who's a sucker for any business story about small and artisanal being better than big and international corporate. It just naturally fits into my world view, even as I did find some of the parellels that Mr Nossiter drew to be a little extreme even for me!

He was sounding a call to the barricades - implying that the end of the world of wine as we know it, is nigh, becos of the unethical machinations of a few, who would have us all drinking boring wine, undistinguishable from one country to the next.

I tend to be a little more pragmatic in my beliefs, and figure that this is all part of the pendulum swing - and currently as he states, the Robert Parkers, and Wine Spectators may have a disporportionate amount of clout, in dictating what wine styles are popular, but they too ( just like the Roman Empire!) will eventually fall, and the pendulum will swing back to more individual styles that speak of terroir and which have 'mysterious depths to their flavour'.

In fact I don't believe those wines have ever gone away - they've just been superseded by the noise in the marketplace about  the more modern, international style in prominance currently. Becos I know a number of wine makers who are not making wine to taste like everyone else, and who are allowing the grapes and yeasts to tell their own story, just as he describes so evocatively of the vignerons in Burgunday that he especially admired. Brian Bicknell who spoke at the Mahi dinner last week, is a classic example of such a winemaker, here in New Zealand, where we don't have centuries old tradition passed on in families, but we do have no less committement to quality.

In every field of endeavour there are always those who care more about the quality of what they do, then the bottom line. Needless to say, we are, none of us, sustainable if the bottom line doesn't feature positive figures periodically, and that is a consideration that has to be ever present, but it isn't necessarily always the defining factor. For some of us...

And then there are those who care more about money than they do anything else, and for those types Mr Nossiter reserves a very special degree of contempt, and his depiction of them is black beyond redemption.

His own wine palate is extraordinary - he has travelled extensively and drunk many wines over the years, and retains an enviable ability for recall. I made a note to myself that it was time to push out of my comfort zone with drinking - too easy to stay with what you know, and to start exploring further afield, becos in amongst the many gems of comments that he drops thru the book, was one I particullarly agreed with;

' the choice of wines is like the choice of friends - it reveals instantly character and taste'

Touche.

We live in a global world. The changes and possibilites wrought in the last 40 years by the speeding up and convenience of international transportion means that people and goods, can travel remarkably faster than has ever being known before. And naturally that is going to change things in ways that haven't been considered before, and not all those changes are on the dark side, although some of them doubtless will be. But I think thats life-theres no perfect resolution to any problem, only degrees of compromise.

I don't enjoy the glitziness of Wine Spectator, it just doesn't sit comfortably with me - and I don't pay much attention to Wine Competitions or what self appointed wine critics say about wine. I use what I read in the media as pointers only - and beyond that I go with my own palate, and those of people I know personally, who's palates I respect. Becos I do totally agree with Mr Nossiter when he states:

-" current fashion for creating spuriously authoritative hierarchies based solely on the taste of individuals, be they critics or sommeliers. These are systems of classification based solely on personal taste - and it is not the 'truth'".

No - truth is personal. What you like and what suits you, regardless of what the critics of this world may or may not decree.

The current cookschool series that we are finishing in a couple of weeks, was pitched as a modern take on vegetarian food.

And the response from people has been interesting. Some people who would normally come to a series didn't, becos it was vegetarian food, and others who hadn't been before, told me how delighted they were that they could finally come to a class, becos they only eat vegetarian food.

It is the sort  of food that Rick and I are eating more and more of at home. We are consciously moving away from eating meat every day, and the reasons for doing that are primarily to do with health I think. Health concerns, tinged a little bit with the awareness of the cost of meat.

I have frequently made the comment in cookschools, not just this series, but in fact many over the last few years, that I do believe that our culture's approach to a hunk of protein on the plate has limited time left. We will increasingly follow the other countries who have developed a cuisine that provides sufficient energy to fuel people,  in which the meat protein features as a minor player.  Thai and Chinese food are 2 examples that immediately spring to mind.

And this article explains why that is a process that is indeed likely to happen, and to happen within my lifetime. I thought it made profound sense.

We are having an exceptionally quiet week at the restaurant, and I'm working hard at being proactive, and using the unexpected free time, to focus on other things, rather than stewing in a juice of funk, becos not enough people love us to come out for dinner.

So maybe thats the reason that I felt suddenly inspired to make a loaf of bread yesterday -something I haven't done in years. We have a wedding coming up in November for which we want to do a range of breads - buns, flat bread and grissini - and I've been experimenting with both grissini recipes and flatbread with mixed success.

Our restaurant bread is made from a starter that we keep feeding, and use as the base for each batch of bread. It is hardly handled at all, although the proving time is over a number of hours. It just ticks away in the background as the guys do the afternoon prep, getting turned and reoiled every hour or so.  It is magnificent bread, but it doesn't present elegantly for weddings I don't feel. Its rustic rather than refined. And for this wedding, the emphasis is on everything being exceedingly elegant.

So Rick sometimes mades little bread rolls, which are cute, and we're just aiming to up the ante slightly by offering people a choice of bread types at this particular wedding. So bread has been on my mind, and maybe becos it was ticking away in my subconscious, I was receptive to this recipe that I picked up yesterday on a blog I regularly read.

Didn't read it until later in the afternoon, but figured that becos the restaurant was going to be quiet, I would be able to flick back over to the house at various times, to deal with the knocking down after proving, and the cooking stages. Which is exactly what happened.

Resisted the temptation to cut a piece before we went to bed, becos  a slice of hot bread fresh from the oven is sublime to eat, but it stuffs the crumb of the remains of the loaf, and I didn't want that to happen.

So we toasted some for breakfast this morning when Rick got back from a swim - and combined with Dougs marmalade it was pretty damn fine. I'm planning on having some for lunch with the  hummus  that I made earlier in the week, and maybe a splosh of olive oil...

Courteney and Rick go thru a lot of bread in their daily diet, becos of the amount of exercise they do, its easy calorie replacement,  and sourcing good quality bread that isn't loaded with extra gluten, has become a bit of a mission for me.

This was so easy to make - the Kitchen Aid did all the mixing, and then it was just a case of leaving it to prove, and making sure the oven was good and hot when it was time to bake - so I guess I could be tempted into making it on a more regular basis.

The original recipe uses half of whole wheat flour, which I didn't have - so I resorted to all white. We used to get wholemeal flour up from the Hislops in  Kaikoura and it was magnificent, but we stopped when we started making the bread that we now do in the restaurant. Maybe we should go back to getting some, and I can onsell it, becos it was the best wholemeal flour I've ever tasted.

And the recipe also said to use unsulphered molasses, not Blackstrap - and I was unaware of what the distinction meant, so checked on Google, as you do. My understanding of this description was that blackstrap, which is what I had, was much stronger, so I only used one tablespoon of that, and 2 tablespoons of Mossops honey, and that provided a nice colour without an overpowering flavour.

All rather moreish I have to say!

And while on the subject of bread - this link is to a fascinating video, that disproves the need to knead bread, and kneading is part of the bread making process that tends to put people off ever embarking on making bread, becos it is time consuming.  We hardly knead the restaurant bread at all, and I thought that worked becos it presents as a flattish loaf. But the loaf of bread that this french baker produces in the video is deep and with a light crumb, not dissimilar to the one I made last nite, and he didn't knead the dough at all. So thats something to mull...

We definitely see it as a positive thing that over the last few years, the restaurant trade in general has started to embrace the idea of buying local, and using seasonal ingredients.

Rather than shipping strawberries half way round the world and delivering them to NZ in June as an expensive, out of season fruit, that has novelty value, but are tasteless and horrible to eat, we have long since figured that its better to wait until November and December when we head up to the Somerfields farm in Oropi, and buy strawberries that have been picked a mere few hours ago.

And as much as we appreciate the way that companies like Sabato, who import a range of top European food products, opened our eyes in the mid eighties to ingredients we'd never heard off, let alone had the opportunity to taste, we have been equally excited in more recent years, by the fact that alot of those overseas products have been subsequently superseded in our pantry by NZ grown equivalents.

As I've just mentioned in the latest newsletter, it gives us real satisfaction to be able to use and support local initiatives.

But as with most things, it is possible to become just a little too earnest and extreme in the championing of local stuff, and I never want to get to the place where I feel the need to hector our customers about the great deal of trouble we go to on their behalf. Becos that can all get just as pretenscious, as the erstwhile desire to be seen to be eating expensive out of season produce once was.

The food from all the great cultures of the world has been in a constant state of evolution over the centuries,  as the explorers spread out accross the globe and came home with novel ingredients, that, when they were first introduced were very expensive becos of their rarity. Then they gradually became commonplace and generally accepted, until such time as they were so integrated that people couldn't remember a time when they didn't cook with them.

Its hard to imagine Italian cuisine without the tomato, but when it was first brought back from South America, it was considered poisonous and banned by the Vatican.

So I guess my point is, that supporting local farmers makes sense on all levels, and is something we naturally endeavour to do, but to become too narrow in focus, can be much too limiting , and I don't think that is necessarily healthy.

We won't buy local if it doesn't taste as good as what we can get from overseas. With fresh ingredients its a no brainer, becos locally grown and freshly picked, is always going to be superior to that which has had to be shipped across the world, since deterioration begins from the minute a fruit or vegetable is picked. So its a pretty easy equation to figure - the closer we are to where its grown, the fresher its going to be, and therefore the better its going to taste.

But that doesn't necessarily apply for value added products. With some of those it has taken awhile for producers to appear on the NZ landscape with sufficent skill to duplicate some of the artisinal producers of Europe and Asia. One of the most exciting developements for us personally, over the last few years, is the fact that we can now source various ingredients like olive oil, and cheeses and charcuterie, along with things like proper wasabi and smoked paprika all made here in NZ to exactingly high standards.

And then of course there is the additional issue that this American article raises  which I hadn't thought about before,  being the fact that so many of the restaurants that are quick to trumpet their committment to the locavore food movement, are strangely silent on the fact that their wine lists are heavily international in their listings, and the carbon miles  used up in moving that stock around the world, somehow undermines their earnestly stated intentions to do good by buying local.

Always a danger in being too absolute in your stated position is that you set yourself up for a fall, and thats why I'm always naturally a bit suspicious of people who extreme and absolute in their stance.

13 August

And as a postscript: - had to laugh at an email I recieved from Brian Bicknell today, thanking us for the dinner on Tuesday nite, in which he mentioned that he'd read this blog, and while he understood the concept of locavore, hoped that we would still continue to buy our wine from Burgundy, Italy Rhone and Marlborough. He promised to bring his on horseback if required, so as to cutback on the carbon imprint!

Probably isn't - but does create a rather humourous mental image!

I am writing this post on Saturday, but possibly won't get to put it on the website till tomorrow, becos Courteney has possesion of my camera and doesn't look likely to relinquish it any time soon.

She's a girl on a mission - having decided she wants/needs an iphone, and so,  to fund this suddenly discovered desire,  she's taking photos of previously acquired 'needs' like a PSP and videos and aero bars and things, that a cleanup in her room revealed discarded and forgotten, in the hope that she'll raise enough cash to satiate the current craving. I couldn't possibly comment!!

I need my camera, becos I want to take a photo of the 3 volumes of Canal House Cooking that arrived yesterday. Not sure where I read about them, but the idea appealed, and I have to say the reality has more than lived up to my expectations.

   

We have a large and growing collection of recipe books, and the reasons for purchasing them are usually triggered by a variety of reasons. Possibly the need to delve deeper into a single subject, for instance, confectionery, or baking or pork cooking. Or maybe its a book written by a restaurant chef who we admire, and we find reading about their life experiences, and getting the background to their recipe developements to be very useful gist. Or, as is currently happening, my interest is piqued by a particular region - I'm currently taking delivery of books relating to Piedmont in Italy, becos that is looking increasingly likely to be the destination for our next forage overseas.

Not quite sure what led to me deciding to buy the Canal House Cooking series, but presumably I read a review that tweaked my interest, and I'm glad that I followed up on it. ( It is not a coincidence that thanks to my account at Amazon, the volume of cookbook purchasing has increased significantly, becos reading about something, and progressing to purchasing, is a simple matter of a couple of key strokes on the computor. Whereas if I was dependant on waiting until next time I was in town, and then remembering the title, the chances of a purchase actually being made are somewhat more meagre. This way the deed is done, before I really need to think about it.)


The two women behind Canal House Cooking, are former food magazine editors, who've travelled the world and written for a number of titles, and who are now bringing their shared love of good food, to publishing a series of seasonal volumes of recipes that relate to home cooking. Volume 1 Summer, 2 Fall and Holiday, and 3 Winter and Spring, cover the first calender year, and my initial flick thru revealed a wide ranging, interesting and stimulating series of recipes,  that definitely made me want to head to the kitchen.

The food style is very reminiscent of Saveur which is one of the better food magazines, in that it takes a real, rather than idealised approach to the food traditions from around the world.
And what this book has done, is absorb all those ideas, and techniques and ingredients, and reform them into a style that is approachable in a modern western kitchen. We may not have the background, cultural understanding of some of these dishes, but we can still appreciate food that tastes good, and for that reason most of us tend to be open to new flavours and suggestions.

And this type of book fits nicely into that framework, becos the authors have had more opportunity than most to travel the globe, and get first hand knowledge from regional exponents, and they've been able to collate all of that experience into an ongoing process of experimentation in their studio kitchen, and along with the recipes, have produced cleverly simple and appealing photos of the food.

I'm assuming from the blurb in the books and on the website that the publishing is to be ongoing - they will come up with new seasonal recipes each year.

This is home cooking at its best. Interesting, flavoursome, good food, that is produce and seasonally driven, and which is both familiar and just a little different in parts. Enough to be stimulating and interesting, without being so otherworldy, that there aren't enough reference points to connect.

I'm hugely impressed.

Rick has to come up with a wide range of recipe ideas every year, in part becos of the different aspects of the business. There are 4 seperate cookschool series in a year, each of which require a range of recipes that haven't been done before over the past 12 years of cookschools; plus the restaurant menu needs to be rejigged seasonally as new produce comes available, and then the range of catering jobs that we do from formal sit down dinner thru to high tea type affairs, means that the kitchen has to be adept at a wide range of skills becos we like to make most stuff ourselves from scratch. And to fuel those skills, we are constantly on the prowl for ideas, that dovetail with a style of food that we find appealing.

My role in that ongoing process is one of researcher really - I read about, order and then take delivery of books that I think might relate to an food area of interest. Sometimes he concurs, and the book will be read thoroughly, and at other times when his enthusiam doesn't match mine, it disappears into the bookcase, only to be rediscovered when we have a particular function coming up and he's looking for something specific. And then it gets rediscovered! And thats OK...

Mahi winery was established in Marlborough in 2001 by Brian and Nicola Bicknell, and they make a small range of wines from hand picked grapes, and using wild yeasts.

On Tuesday nite, we hosted a dinner with Brian , and were treated to a delightfully entertaining evening, as Brian stood to introduce each wine, as we proceeded thru the courses.

Deeply knowledgable  and with complete passion for what they do, he was a pleasure to have.

I was told by a number of the attendees that Rick had excelled himself with the food - the matches worked really well, and I knew we'd got it right, when a number of people proclaimed different courses to be their favourite.

We'd used a Momofuku recipe for fried chicken, purely becos we're using David Changs cookbook for inspiration at the moment, and it was one of a number that Rick had turned too, when designing the menu.

Brian had asked for a copy of the menu last week, and we sent it thru not knowing that he had eaten at Momofuku in New York, so was intrigued to see the reference in the menu lineup, and understood from having read the cookbook himself, that the chicken dish Rick was planning on doing, was in fact a 3 day process, to brine, steam and then finally cook.

He made reference to the Momofuku connection on his Facebook ( unbenownst to us, becos I am steadfastly refusing to have a Facebook account.), and that caused confusion amongst those who had read it, and thought it was a alusion to something a bit odd and strange..

So the explanation that he gave, was one of many witty and entertaining stories that he weaved during the evening.

A pleasure all round!

I am currently reading a totally fascinating book, 'Liquid Matters' by Jonathon Nossiter, which is taking awhile, partly becos I'm finding it thoroughly engrossing and am trying to spin it out so it doesn't end anytime soon, and partly becos Mr Nossiter writes in an intense style, with meaty, chewy expressions that can take awhile to digest.

It could have as a subtitle ' How Robert Parker has stuffed the wine world', becos the author has little respect for the tyranny that American wine critic  Parker"s scores out of 100 have imposed on the wine world.

This article portrays a simliar bias....and rather more succinctly points out that its hard to get a perfect world.

I'm a big believer in the pendulum swing - in all things and at all times, we are in the process of swinging from one end of the pendulum to the other. Things never stay the same, and seldom do we achieve equilibrium . But however extreme some of the swings may be, at some point they will correct and start heading back in the other direction.

When I first started taking note of the wider wine community - probably back in the early 90's, Robert Parker was the undisputed king of judgement on wine, but increasingly over the last few years, dissent and carping has started undermining his perch.

A different perspective is gaining traction, and so the pendulum will start to swing back in the other direction....

Forget all the crap and hysteronics you get to see on reality TV about restaurants, and revel in the precision and beauty of this movie about a day in the life of a 3 starred restaurant in Paris, Guy Savoy.

The hospitality industry doesn't get anymore focused or serious than this. Quite gorgeous....

Was pondering an article I'd read in the paper this morning, about the cons of joining Facebook, and how superficial that kind of electronic connection can be.

I have no desire to join Facebook, and can't see that status changing in the near future, and a big part of the reason for that, is that my work life surrounds me with people to chat too, and exchange opinions with on a daily basis, so there is no need to further share my private life.

I guess to a degree I do that thru this blog, and that seems to work for me.

This short video on a cafe in Paris, captures perfectly why I think eye to eye contact, and real physical interaction is so much more satisfying, then the form of connection you get over Facebook.

I know you're not supposed to eat at the computor, but I'm currently tucking into a bowlful of warm polenta, topped with some sauteed vegetables and pinenuts, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. The polenta is made from NZ cornmeal which I finally tracked down at the gluten free shop in Cameron Rd, and I think it definitely tastes fresher, and has more 'corn' flavour than the imported varieties that I've used up until now.

We have a number of customers with celiac, so are in and out of the Gluten free shop regularly getting flour and various other things, so that we can accomodate those people in the restaurant or cookschools, and I will definitely be getting more of this cornmeal for moi, next time I'm in.

The restaurant is exceptionally quiet tonite, so I have retreated to home, becos theres a number of things I could catch up with at my desk, which will be a better use of my time, then feeling forlorn and sorry for myself over there. Its been a really quiet week, and we can't even rely on Saturday nite to pull the average back up, becos with the Allblack game televised at 7.30pm, I know now that we won't be full, and I hate it when that happens on a Saturday...

You really need to take a big deep breathe at times like this and focus on the bigger picture..or so I keep telling myself!

Some menu changes on tonite, and becos of the quietness of the nite, Rick probably won't get the chance to try out the plating of all the new dishes, but before I left, a couple of the new ones had been ordered.

We get criticised occasionally for not changing our menu enough, which always somewhat bemuses me, becos from my perspective, I feel that its in a constant start of flux. The changes are seldom wholesale, but the odd thing is been altered quite regularly. And today is typical, where theres a new entree on, and 6 of the mains have been changed. We still have chicken, fish, lamb, beef fillet, and lamb shank on, but the way they're been cooked and what they're been served with has altered - and that definitely classifies as a change to my mind!

Especially since Rick has decided to serve the lamb shank without the mashed potato that has accompanied it for the last, I don't know how many years! There'll be some whinging about that one I suspect - thereby proving that we can't win. If we don't change, we get criticised, and if we do alter something that people love, then we're also up for criticism!

I try to keep uptodate with the menu listings on the website becos some people are very particular about what they  want, and if they've preread the menu on the website and then get to the restaurant to find it slightly changed, they can be quite nonplussed. For that reason I've been resisting pressure from the organiser of a large group that we have due to come in a few weeks, who's been wanting a copy of the set menu NOW, so that she can get it printed, becos I knew these changes were iminent and I wanted to make sure what I sent her thru was the latest edition. Hopefully she'll be pacified tomorrow when I send it to her, but she's been interesting to deal with, so it remains to be seen...

Cookschool bookings for the Christmas series are starting to come in, and I'm taking deep breaths and staying abreast of it all, becos it becomes interesting sometimes. Fascinates me how many people booking for the first time, don't like the fact that we haven't told them what the food is going to be. I have to confess that I just take it as a given now that people will book, knowing the general framework of what we're doing - ie, this time, it will be festive food - but not needing to know exactly what that will be.

But it would appear, that not knowing pushes some people out of their comfort zone, and they really don't like it. And I find that curious. I look on classes as an opportunity to learn something - the specifics of which don't matter to me hugely, but I always take away something, to add to my knowledge and skill in the kitchen, and I know that most regular attendees regard the classes similarly. Together with being a pleasant social outing...

I will eat anything - especially anything cooked by a good chef. At Merediths recently we tried the tofu dish, expressly becos neither of us have had pleasant experiences with tofu, and figured that if a chef of Michael Merediths calibre had a dish on his small menu centered on tofu, then he had to figure it was good, and we were curious to try. And it turned out to be the standout dish in an extremely good meal.

But some people have a much tighter frame of reference in what they are prepared to eat, and for what ever reason, don't want to have to try something that they think they don't like - and rather than just coming with an open frame of mind, would rather avoid a session if they thought it featured something they didn't like. Curious...

Its been a bit of a mission, finding someone I can buy the range of craft beers that I want to list on the restaurant menu. But we are there now thanks to the very knowledgeable guys at Regional Wines in Wellington, that Phil put me on too - the beers have just arrived and I'm delighted!!

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Rick and I had the good fortune to be taken thru a fascinating tasting exercise of some of the NZ craft beers which are increasingly starting to appear on the landscape. I have been conscious for awhile, that I needed to get off my chuff and start researching some of these small boutique producers, in just the same way, that I focus on accessing wines that aren't necessarily readily available, but which I think may appeal to our customer base.

I have no idea at this point how the idea of craft beers is going to be recieved in the restaurant - and it might initially be a bit of a hard sell, to convince men to step away from their familiar brands. But most of the aficiandos of craft beer that I've spoken too, are totally convinced of the superiority and the range of flavours available from the small producers.

I don't even especially like the flavour of hops, but was stunned at the range of different tastes in the varying styles of beers, from pilsener, pale ale, brown ale and porter. And even I had to concede, that they have oodles more flavour and interest than the rather bland versions produced by the goliath brewerys.

Hopefully lots of customers will concur with me!