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!

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...

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...

I've spent a fair whack of today trying to find the source of this pea recipe so that I could pass it on. I get alot of daily emails regarding the food world and thought it was in one of those, but going thru all my deleted folder was to no avail.

However, finally - after spending some time putting an updated version of the lunch and dinner menu on the website - I found it. ( We tinker with the menu reasonably often - sometimes the changes are very small, and I don't always update the menus listed on the website with every change, but it was time to play catch up.)

We have a tendency at Somerset to cook our vegetables so they are still green and have texture. In fact we're known for it. Occasionally we get good customers of my parents generation who ask in advance if the vegetables for their table, that automatically come out with mains, can be cooked more than we normally do. And having been forewarned we're happy to oblige.

Like most, I have memories of soggy and unbearably overcooked vegetables in my childhood ( and this was in a household with an enormous vegetable garden where vegetables took pride of place, so the trend of the time,  must have been to overcook.)

So we prefer to move in the other direction - and I always read with some interest the discussions in French cookbooks in particular about cooking green beans more. Some of the rationales given would imply that our understanding that giving vegetables more than just a quick introduction to a pot of boiling water, may be a bit of an over simplification.

So this blog on cooking peas, fitted right into that thesis, and I printed out the recipe intent on trying it.

Did so on Monday - and I have to say the end result was sublime. I'm a pea lover, and I simply never expected to enjoy eating peas that had cooked for over 10 mins, quite like I did the other nite.

Both Rick and I felt they were exceptional, and an idea we'll return too in some guise, or cookschool maybe.

We're doing a large outcatering job on Saturday nite that involves retro food, and its taken alot of discussion to come up with food ideas that while looking backwards, will not be considered bad taste.

We were going to do peas as one of the main course accompainments - and I think we've now discovered how we're going to cook them, and in some ways cooking them for a longer period then we would previously have done, is ironically showing more authenticity to the theme than we intended!

While Rhonda is on holiday, I'm covering her Thursday lunch shift, and Roz is doing Wednesday and Friday. Its a long time  since I've fronted lunchtime - mainly becos I'm usually tied up with cookschools when lunch is happening, and also becos over the last few years, its one of the roles that Rhonda has taken over from me.

So I was a little ambivalent about the prospect of stepping back in, even if it was only for one day a week - and if Roz hadn't already been covering all the rest of Rhondas shift plus some extras, I probably would have encouraged her to do it. But to be fair, I figured she was going to need some time away from the place occasionally, so on a Thursday it's me.

And I've quite surprised myself by enjoying it. Our lunches vary hugely in busyness - we're percieved as a fine dining restaurant locally, the subtext of which is 'expensive', and therefore most people look to a more casual cafe style lunch. We do however, have some formidably regular customers, who like what we do at lunchtime, and I have no doubt that we provide a niche in the market for when people are looking for something a step up from a sandwich.

So while lunches vary in numbers, they are still very much worth our while being open for the 3 days that we do them, and one of the reasons is that there is someone out front to cover the phone calls, and the people dropping in to buy vouchers or product, or talk about cookschools,  or the myriad other reasons, that people come in for.

Its given me a chance to catch up on all sorts of things that I've been meaning to do, but usually don't have the down time over there to address. Now I find I'm even writing myself lists of other things I should do on the next Thurs - decided today that I want to list the rieslings on the wine list, from dryest to sweetest to try and give people a barometer for a grape type that can vary hugely in recidual sugar, and will line them all up next Thurs to do that.

Those sorts of jobs. Things that I often think about doing, but actually getting round to nail a time to address it always seems to escape me. So I've discovered that Thursday lunches are proving a godsend! And waitressing itself - actually serving people is something that I enjoy. It is the basis to all the other jobs that I do with this business, and it is one that I fundamentally like. If I didn't, I don't think I'd have survived this long in the job, becos I wouldn't want to merely work on the business- I thrive on being in the midst of it all.

There are some people who are maybe not a pleasure to serve, but they are such an infintisimal percentage of our overall customer base, and I work very hard to ensure that they don't become the dominant influence.

Lunches used to be a drag to do, becos for years we lived away from the restaurant, and would drive here in the morning to do the prep and get ready for lunch, serve lunch; drive home ( after picking up the girls from school and getting them to whatever after school activity they were involved in), and then be heading back to the restaurant at 5pmish for evening service. If people decided to sit late at lunchtime, which often happens, then our whole afternoon would be thrown askew, and often there would be no break between lunch and dinner - becos a quick dash home to have a shower and change doesn't constitute a break in my book.

Moving next door to the restaurant meant that was considerably less of an issue, and having Rhonda do straight through shifts has meant its even less of one now. If someone comes in at 5 to 2, wanting lunch we would once have winced, becos that would have meant, quite often not getting away till 4 or 4.30pm, but now with Rhonda there until 5pm, and me taking over for the nite shift, it means that its effortless for people to come and enjoy whiling away the afternoon.

Much better all round really.

I was however very keen to exit the door as close to 2pm today as I could make it, cos wanted to make a recipe that had come thru on the internet this morning for Rick and I for lunch, and had a few other things that I needed to get done during the afternoon, so was hopeful that today wasn't a day that someone would turn up after 1.30pm.

The gods were smiling, becos the customers we had,  left in timely fashion (and not becos I in anyway indicated I wanted them to go!), and I got away. Rick cooked the dish for us, becos he'd been able to leave the kitchen sooner than me, and becos he wanted to get in a run this afternoon, he wanted lunch as early as possible.

The recipe I'd seen was for papperdelle with spiced butter, and I'd brought home the left over pasta sheets from the cookschool yesterday, thinking at the time that I'd make something out of it, so when I spied this recipe I thought it would be perfect for lunch with the fresh pasta. We altered the recipe a titch - used peas instead of asparagus, and hazelnuts instead of pinenuts - and it worked out beautifully.

  101 Cookbooks is a vegetarian website - she writes beautifully, and her recipes are always interesting . I use them a surprising amount, becos somehow as I get older, I'm just less and less inclined to eat meat, and I find her ideas stimulating.
The cookbook she refers too, I've just ordered, becos I have the original one by the same authors, 'Ottolenghi, The cookbook', and it is superb. They're a series of very successful  cafes in London, and their food ideas are vibrant and fresh, with a middle eastern influence. As Nigel Slater says on the cover blurb 'This is simply wonderful cooking ...modern, smart and thoughtful."

Precisely!

I had a beetroot salad recently and the beetroot just didn't quite taste right. Decided later that it must have been boiled - becos the flavours were flat and muddied, and there was no sweetness.

So when I went to cook some today, I roasted the balls unpeeled, in a medium oven for well over an hour. To tell the truth I'd forgotten about them, and they were well cooked by the time I retrieved them from the oven.

Let them cool down a bit then peeled  and sliced them, and debated what liquid to store them in. My mother used to regularly do boiled beetroot in malt vinegar - there were bowls of that in the fridge for most of my childhood. But I just don't use malt vinegar these days - its too astringent for me, and as I pondered what else to use, I decided to pop over to the restaurant and grab some of the orange and palm sugar sauce that goes on the duck, becos orange and beetroot are 2 flavours that work well together.

Discovered once I'd poured the sauce over the beetroot that what I had grabbed was in fact the burnt orange sauce, which is intensely orangey in flavour becos its been reduced right down to about a 10th of its original volume, but which has also had sugar added. So its sweeter than I'd anticipated.

Queried Rick when I tasted it, as to what I could do to diminish the sugar hit, and he suggested vinegar, and as I was going to grab a bottle of that out of the pantry, I spied the bottle of cassis, and having read a recipe last week, that involved cassis and red wine vinegar and beetroot I decided to use a splosh of that, and the end result has been magnificent.

We've just had a sandwich that Ricks made with lettuce, cheese and some of the slices of beetroot, and it was pretty damn fine, I have to say.

Precisely what we needed in fact. Today was Mothers Day, and some of the tables that we get on Mothers Day, are not our normal client base, and their expectations are distinctly odd, and it can make for a very interesting few hours!

Quite what inspired the need for some rice pudding this afternoon I'm not sure - but it suddenly occurred to me that it'd be a nice thing to have a bowlful of, before we headed over to the restaurant for evening service. Maybe its that distinct chill in the air, that made me think of something warming and comforting. Hard to say really.

Mentioned to Rick I was thinking about making some and his enthusiatic response meant I had to get serious. At his suggestion I used a Guy Savoy recipe although adapted for what was in the pantry.

Mum used to make rice pudding by baking it in the oven - I remember that distinctly, becos we used to fight over who got the skin that formed on the top. Most recipes that I read nowadays though, suggest oven top cooking with occasional stirring - so I decided to mix and match.

Followed his recipe pretty much - bought half a cup of short grain rice to the boil, strained that and then transferred it to a terracotta  turkish cassarole dish I have, ( we've discovered over the years that the material that your cooking vessel is made of, can make a significant difference to the end result),  and added two and a half cups of milk, 1 and a quarter cups of cream, a generous tspn of vanilla paste, quarter of a cup of sugar, and the zest of a lime that I'd chopped up finely. Oh - and a handful of raisins.

The lime and raisins were my innovation - and the rice I used probably wasn't what Mr Savoy intended either but its what I had in the pantry - a good quality Italian rissotto rice - and it worked just fine.

Cooked it in the oven for over an hour at about 180o, until all the liquid had evaporated - did get up from my diary writing occasionally to stir it, which allowed me to check how it was cooking.

We've just had a bowlful, and I feel warmed thru. The tang of the citrus was just perfect with all that creamy richness.  Next time I'll pause long enough before dishing up to take a photo!

I am indulging in some classic procrastination, and I'm not going to let myself get away with it for too much longer - but just before I bring out the annual accounts folder and get stuck into what I need to do to wrap all that up, I thought I'd just link to the lime curd recipe I've just made.

We get limes from customers in Katikati, and currently have an abundance of them, so they're been used at the restaurant in a host of different ways, and it did occur to me the other day that they may also work as an equivalent curd to lemon.

Sylvia Sandford gave me some of her lime curd at the Clevedon Market last year, so I knew it could be done, I just wasn't sure whether the recipe would need to be tweaked at all to account for different levels of acidity.

So have just followed David Lebovitzs instructions in this recipe, and the only alteration I needed to make was to substitute lime juice for the lemon,  and have ended up with a large cup full of beautifully rich curd, with just that right level of tang.

Don't especially need curd becos we're not big toast eaters in this household, but figured that it wouldn't be too much problem coming up with ways of using it.

I have a Gala recipe for scones that I ripped out of the Sunday paper awhile back, that layers lemon curd and cooked dates between 2 pieces of scone dough, and I may give that a go on Sunday to greet Rick when he drives back from Auckland, having taken Courteney up there the nite before  en route to China.

And we're making a large croquembouche for a good customer in a few weeks - and while the filling is traditionally creme patissiere, we have on occasion filled the profiteroles, with curd mixed with whipped cream - and with all this citrus around that may be the way we go this time.

( During another bit of procrastination last nite ,  I watched the final of Masterchef on the computor, rather than getting stuck into the accounting as I had intended, and was intrigued to see the method they used to make a croquembouche, by layering the profiteroles inside the cone.)

That wasn't something I'd encountered before.

I have no doubt that it will all get eaten - and it was so easy and quick to make that I may just have to make some more.

I used direct heat as instructed by David in his recipe - something my mother would never have done. She always made her curd over a double boiler, but Rick uses direct heat for his, and I figured as long as I stood over it and whisked, I should be OK. Which I was.

 Did however change my saucepan after I'd started , becos the straightsided one I'd initially reached for,  doesn't work with a whisk - you can't get into the edges and things burn there. I have a de boyer saucepan with a rounded bottom that is a dream to use for things like this, and that made the whisking easy and considerably less fretful.

The guys are making pastry cases over at the restaurant for a caramalised onion tart we''re serving as an entree with Clevedon Buffalo mozzarello. I might just have to swipe one after lunch service today and fill it with some lime curd - all in the name of research, you understand!      

I grew up in a family where my mother insisted, all thru our college years that we had to eat a major, sit down at the table, kind of breakfast. No grab and run eating was ever allowed - even when we tryed to find excuses for why we didn't want to have to eat bowls of cereal, then have bacon and eggs, followed by toast. No dissention was brooked, as was often case with Betty.

Possibly becos of that, and possibly becos of the years I've spent working late at nite, mornings have never been one of my favourite times to eat. And once I left home, that legacy of a major meal in the morning was one of the first childhood habits that I jettisoned.

And thru all those years I was never able to enjoy commercially bought cereal. Simply couldn't stomach the stuff. It had the texture of cardboard I always thought and was preternatually sweet. Weetbix was just bearable, but I had to eat it dry. Once it had milk on it and went soggy, I couldn't handle the texture.

Ma went thru a period of making bircher   muesli - the stuff you soak overnite -  which I enjoyed, or porridge over winter, but I was never able to convert myself to cornflakes or rice bubbles.

Over the last few years I've got into the habit of getting my morning nutrition via a smoothy - and that seemed perfect for me, becos I never wanted anything too heavy, but could blend up fruit and yoghurt with some honey and maybe tahini, and feel reasonably virtuous in the process.

Have had a rethink this year though, prompted by both my daughters now flatting. Both of them expend a scary amount of energy during the day with their various physical endeavours, and I'm just not convinced that there is the nutritional value in the store bought cereals, to keep them going at their kind of level. They're both lazy little tarts when it comes to cooking too, and neither would be inclined to cook themselves a big bowl of porridge, so I decided to step in and commit myself to supplying them regularly with homemade muesli.

And have surprised myself by enjoying eating it too - its not too sweet, its filling and satisfying to eat, so we've all become addicted.


When I suggested to the girls earlier in the year that it would be something I could do - we decided to have a chat to Josh at Slowfish, becos his muesli is what we always order for breakfast if we're there, since its the best available in town.

I've also noted in a few foodstores that I've been in recently that  inhouse muesli is becoming very trendy - with a number now on the market. Tried some of them, and am comfortable that the recipe that I've evolved from Josh's original advice works just perfectly for us.

Have however, tweaked it just slightly after a chat with Leanne, late at nite at a wedding, when we were discussing food as you sometimes do. I'd spotted a container of raspberry coulis that was left over from the plating of the dessert and mentioned to Rick that I'd be quite happy to commandeer that for the house- alot of food gets thrown out at the end of weddings becos its not useable in the restaurant - becos had the sudden thought that it would be lovely on my muesli. Leanne asked if I was making my own, and we got into a bit of a discussion, with her saying that she is now using macadamia oil and vanilla in hers. That sounded like a pretty awesome idea to me, and I have included both ideas in the last couple of batches - and am sure that there will be further tweaks ahead as other people share their good ideas.

So the current version of muesli in our household goes something like this...

I head to Bin Inn and buy a couple of bags of jumbo rolled oats; some seasame seeds; pumpkin seeds; sunflower seeds; coconut threads; dried fruit; and banana chips. There really is no measurement - it all just gets tossed together until the proportions look about right. Bin Inn have convenient and very reasonably priced bags of seeds which I grab and use one of each in the batch.

Heat a 250ml bottle of macadamia nut oil with a large spoonful of Mossops honey, and a couple teaspoons of Heilala vanilla paste.
While thats happening I mix all the oats, seeds and cut up what nuts I have. Today was almonds and hazelnuts - that all gets tossed together, then dried in a low oven, approx 150o for a couple of hours. I stir it regularly to make sure it doesn't burn on top.

When it comes out of the oven I add what dried fruit I have - usually something like raisins, dried pineapple, and quite by accident these banana chips have become a bit of a hit with the family.

Thats it - it's easy.

Have commandeered the Weetbix tin to store it in, and that with some fruit and yoghurt, ( and raspberry coulis for now), constitutes a breakfast that I can really enjoy. At last!

Packets from Bin Inn unloaded and ready to go...

Oil and honey and vanilla heating up, prior to being mixed thru the oats and etc. I don't like too much oil or too much sweetness in the muesli - it needs to be just right. Tried one recently that I suspect had liquid glucose in it as well as the honey and oil, and it was too coated, if that makes sense.

I give it a long slow roasting in the oven at a lowish temperature so theres not too much chance of it burning. I do however stir on a regular basis just to keep tossing things and keeping the cooking even. And once its out of the oven like this I add the fruit, while everything is still hot.

Will let it cool right down, and then store it away. By the time Courteneys nicked half when she heads back to Hamilton on Sunday, I'll probably be making another batch next week.

But thats OK! Our feijoas are just starting to drop and Johns just brought us out a couple of big bags of his, so I'll be stewing some of them up to take the place of the raspberry coulis.

I enjoy breakfast these days....

I do realise that Hot Cross Buns are supposed to be eaten on Good Friday, and that I'm a little late linking to a recipe, now that the long Easter weekend is done and dusted.

My first couple of efforts to make some buns for the family last week,  were not successful, and as  much as Courteney was polite about the 'flavour' of the buns I'd made from a new recipe, we both knew that hot cross buns aren't supposed to have the texture of bullets, so after a bit of research I found this recipe on Dan Lepards website.

He actually calls them Spiced Stout buns - and I suspect the cross was added simply to modify them into being an Easter bun.

The recipe was a little different to what I'd worked  with previously, but the idea of what is almost a poolish, that is left to sit overnite, is very similar to the base of the bread we make at the restaurant. And it suited me, becos I started it on Sunday nite, headed over to Te Awamutu early Monday morning, for Courteneys last day of racing, then came home and made the rest of the dough, did the small amount of kneading, and  left the buns to rise, while Hannah and I headed over to the Mount. ( I usually go up the Mount in the morning, so to be heading down as nite was falling, and all the lights were coming on, was quite beautiful. )

Came home and popped them in the oven - and we had Hot Cross Buns after an Indian takeaway dinner - which was possibly considerably more carbohydrate then we needed in the evening, and maybe not the most appropriate of accompanments, but with some Prosecco, it all seemed to taste just fine!

Nice relaxed end to a full on few days!

In his recipe he uses Stout - I used Guiness cos I usually have some cans of that in the pantry becos I need it for the Christmas puddings.

His spice range was interesting too - cinnamon as well as mace. They're very similar so I used cinnamon as instructed and also allspice, along with the ginger.

I have some grapefruit that we candied last year - and I chop that up very fine instead of mixed peel. It is divine - a much richer more complex flavour than packaged peel.

And I used currants instead of raisins, becos they're more traditional to me. But beyond that I followed instructions, and we ended up with flavoursome, rather scrummy buns, The sort of baking that I enjoy.

We have got into the habit of  calling these biscuits 'Outward Bound' biscuits, but their correct name I believe, is Anankiwa Flapjacks. They're a biscuit I make quite often when either of the girls are racing.In fact Courteney went thru a stage when she didn't want them, becos she said the taste of them made her get nervous, so strong was the association with racing.

She is currently doing the Te A Tour, a 3 day event, and requested some of these to fortify her - so I made them along with hot cross buns yesterday. The hot cross buns were not as sucessful as the ones I made last year - was trialing a new recipe, and I would not describe them as an unmitigated success, so rather than giving the recipe for those, as I promised in the newsletter yesterday, I thought I'd dig out the Outward Bound one instead.
As an aside, the one good technique I did pick up from the hot cross bun recipe though was to glaze them when they came out of the oven with melted golden syrup. That was easy - easier than melting, and sieving apricot jam as I normally do, and worked really well.

The first time I made these biscuits they were great - so I got cocky and was a bit casual with the measurements the next couple of times which cost me dearly. Rather than having 36 odd biscuits we ended up with a large one covering the entire base of the oven tray. Chastened I went and bought some proper measuring spoons, and have used them ever since. With baking I have found that being precise helps!

Recipe;

Melt:
285g butter
6 tbsp golden syrup

Add: 2 tsp baking soda
4 tsp boiling water

Mix with:
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup sultanas
2 cups flour
1 cup roasted sunflower seeds
2 cups coconut
1 cup raw sugar
1/2 cup chopped apricots

Bake: 160o for 30 mins.

I vary the mix depending on what I have in the pantry - often using pumpkin seeds rather than sunflower, or raisins instead of sultanas. Its also become a bit of a tradition to cut up chocolate - sometimes white, if I happen to have a block of that ( I mean the proper stuff, not milky bar) hanging around, or as I did yesterday, dark chocolate.

They are kind of like eating solid muesli...

 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!

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.!

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.