Courteney is home at the moment on mid term break, and she and Rick went out today for a 4 hour bike ride, as you do. I stayed home working on some photography homework, and trying to get the dogs to run for me down below so I could practise taking action photos on manual using the shutter speed as my priority. Forgot to focus a couple of times becos I was so busy concentrating on getting the balance right between the fstop and the shutter speed - so have a couple of photos with perfect exposure and  fuzzy canine images.

Obviously going to take some practise! We're driving up to the Coromandel, once we can get away from service tonite, and will head out tomorrow morning to watch Andrew on Day 2 of the Coromandel Classic, so should be an opportunity there to take more action photos surely... A text from Hannah earlier today, saying he was currently lying in top Male Individual position, something he's hopefully maintaining a hold on. They're out of cellphone range at the moment so we haven't had an update.

Diet has become a major issue for Courteney, as she looks to maximise her cycling performance in every way, and all ingredients are currently being assessed in terms of their glycaemic index - foods that will deliver slowly to the bloodstream,and as a result our eating habits when she is around have been modified ever so slightly, becos I've never been inclined to cook two different meals. So we eat what she's eating.

And most of what she is talking about, makes for a commensensical approach to good eating, and is not too far removed from the way Rick and I eat most of the time anyway, so it hasn't been a hardship to adapt. It just means I avoid doing any baking of things like tan squares when she's around, becos that sort of direct sugar hit would be unfair to have sitting in the pantry.

Given she was always the one of our children with the most boring palate, who would react negatively to vegetables or wholemeal bread, this current approach to diet has been quite a turnaround, and one I'm keen to encourage, becos I've always believed that eating whole foods must be better for you.It just makes sense to me.

Knowing they'd arrive home needing serious energy replenishment, I had lunch pretty much ready to go - brown rice which we now use instead of white, tossed thru leeks that had been slowly sweated off in a mixture of olive oil and butter, with courgettes, peas, and some endamame beans, which you can now buy frozen at the supermarket I was delighted to note.

Tossed some pumpkin seeds over the top, becos I'm trying to increase the amount of magnesium I consume in a day to help my breathing, and it really was delicious. Courteney made the addition of some tomato sauce on her plateful - a habit she hasn't been able to jettison even with this new eating orthodoxy, and even though she is fully aware of the sugar content of her favourite brand. I couldn't possibly comment!!

Have a couple of sultana cakes in the oven at the moment - one to take up to Hannah and Andrew, along with the huge bottle of Pics Peanut Butter that we got for them and which is the best peanut butter you can buy, and one for us. Its the Edmonds Cookbook recipe - except I add Pedro Ximenz sherry rather than almond essence to the cooked sultanas. As you do.

Service at the restaurant tonite will be over very early. Rick has just said that most of the tables are in at 6.00 and 6.30pm which is unusual, but predictable given the Allblacks game against the Wallabies will be televised close to 10pm. I am not going to whinge, becos as of last nite we still weren't full for tonite, and I hate not been full on  a Saturday nite. So much so that I was shamelessly soliciting business from some of our cookshool attendees yesterday - people who admittedly I know well, and who responded favourably to my admonishments that they really should bring their husbands in for dinner! Last I checked, there weren't too many free tables so I'm hopeful we'll have sold them all.

And the fact it will be a hard hitting early nite, as most aim to be out the door and home in time  to watch the rugby, is something I promise I won't grumble about. Far better that, then no customers, and its going to mean that Rick and I will also be able to get away early and head up to Coromandel, getting there before midnite, which will be great.

There is no doubt that rugby impacts on our Saturday nite trading - and I've had many a friend tell me semi seriously that we really should consider a big screen somewhere in the restaurant. I don't agree at all. We are not the kind of environment that people would come too to watch rugby, and as such it would be an imposition for those who want a meal without any intrusion of rugby, especially over the few weeks that are coming up.

Bearing that in mind, I suspect that we will have some quieter nites over the World Cup, and given we're not in a town where any of the games are being played, I'm not expecting too much of an increase in trade from visitors. But an email today made me ponder that I might yet be proven wrong, when a lady from Ireland contacted me to say she was going to be in NZ for the RWC, and wanted to come to one of our cookschools in October.

The Bay of Plenty tends to miss out on the bulk of travellers movements as they go from Wellington to Auckland up Highway One, but maybe there will be more independant and adventureous souls, than I'd anticipated.

Needless to say, I'm quite happy to be proven wrong. And I'm quite sure that all of NZ will benefit downstream from the tournement as the number of visitors spend money across the economy. It will have a trickle on effect everywhere I'm sure. 

Regardless, hopefully, of who wins the bloody rugby!!

Thinking about what type of countries the rugby supporters are most likely to be coming from, I've just been on my Google Analytics site to have a look at what countries of origin I'm currently getting hits on the website from.  Makes for a fascinating breakdown in statistics, becos not only do I get the country, I get the towns within - over the last month, 7 people in Paris, went on our website, and 9 from Aix-de-Provence, and 6 from London, plus others from all over the place.

There is no doubt that the internet is an extraordinarily, interconnective tool. Quite amazing really...

The current cookschool series is well underway, and so for the next few weeks I will eat the dishes for lunch with the rest of the attendees, becos after the class we all sit down for lunch around a table in the restaurant, and discuss all manner of stuff, as the people mix in each class differs, and that means that the conversation can flow in all sorts of directions.

The lunches that follow the classes were almost inadvertent, we had initially planned to feed people in the kitchen as the food was being made, but changed our minds, and set them up in two stages instead, with the class first and then the eating stage. And that has paradoxically ended up being one of the aspects of the classes that I most enjoy as we get up close and personal with a whole range of people and  get to hear all manner of things.

It does however mean that I get to eat the lunch 14/15 times in a normal series over a couple of months, and while that is no hardship in itself, becos I happen to enjoy food, it has meant over the last little while that I've been looking for a lighter way of eating at home to act as a foil for the rich lunch we're having at the moment. Last week that lead me to Lauraine Jacobs soup ideas in that weeks Listener, and I made a large bowl of her '6 green vegetable soup' for Rick and I for dinner. Courteney would have baulked at the unremitting greenness of the bowlful if she'd been home! A healthy and nourishing supper that I was most impressed with, but then I love soup and could eat it in its many guises for virtually every meal.

Over the weekend I made us all for lunch a recipe I'd ripped out of the Sunday papers last week - a Richard Till one, for a cassarole made from brown rice and grated pumpkin. The idea of grating a pumpkin intrigued me, so I made the cassarole, adding some leftover redpepper and cashew pickle between the layers, since I had a bowlful sitting in the fridge, and the end result was  greeted with approval, although Courteney did make a trip to the fridge to retrieve her ubiquitous bottle of tomato sauce, on the subject of which, I've given up wasting my breath in protest.

Decided I would definitely make the cassarole again, but could see room to introduce some other vegetables to perhaps provide some textural contrast.

And yesterday on our day off, I finished the 2 day process of following James MacGuires recipe in the latest Art of Eating on brioche. James is one of my go-to experts on bread making - his precision and the pedanticness in his recipes means that they look convoluted, but are in fact, just a very detailed description of the process and the reasons for each step. I learn alot from reading him.

Good brioche is something I love and we've made our own at the restaurant for years, and have also done it in couple of cookschools. Its currently on the menu with the salmon entree, served in the traditional style as a brioche a tete, but a mini version.

So I'm familiar with the method of making it and was curious to see how ours differed from the one James outlined as a very traditional approach. The main differences that I could discern was that this recipe used a sponge to start and mixed the butter in at the beginning rather that at the end of the dough forming cycle as we do normally, and had conspicuously less mixing time then we normally give it.  Both approaches call for a long proving time, usually at least overnite in the fridge, in order to allow the rich combination of eggs and butter to come together.

I set the dough for its final rising yesterday afternoon then cooked it and within an hour we were eating large slabs of brioche bread with raspberry jam, and I got complimentary comments from my husband on the texture, but no concession that it was any better than the recipe he's used for years!
I thought it was sublime - light consistency of crumb with complex flavours of the ferment.

Something I will make again...

And then last nite both of us spent hours flicking thru magazines, musing our way to lists of ideas. Rick has menu changes that are required, and the Christmas cookschool series, is starting to make its presence felt on the horizon, whereas my reasons for drawing up lists are always a little more vague and ideas orientated.

I don't do any cooking in the restaurant kitchen these days. I used too in the very early days before the children happened along, but most of my contribution back in those days was at a mundane level of peeling potatoes and the other jobs that have to happen every day.

Now my contribution with the food is more at an ideas level - things I read and see, comments I hear. I experiment reasonably often in the home kitchen, curious to see how ideas on the paper translate, or to learn new techniques, and sometimes Rick will extrapolate that across to something at the restaurant and sometimes he won't. Both of which conclusions sit comfortably with me, becos my need to try is based more around the notion of extending my own  knowledge, then it is about any need to claim personal responsibility for dishes on the restaurant menu.

Sometimes I almost shudder in embarrassment at how little I actually knew when we first opened the restaurant, relative to all the stuffing thats since gone on in my head - both metaphorically and physically! - in the intervening years. A process for which, I'd delighted to note, I'm far from at an end point.

So I photocopied off a number of pages last nite - one of the downsides of getting lots of magazines, is that unless you're meticulously organised, (and that is not something I can profess to being), it is virtually impossible to later put your hands on a good idea that you may have read earlier in the week, becos as much as you think you will remember what magazine you saw it in, you never do. Or at least I don't. So now I photocopy - I make myself.

 And for that reason I have a plastic cover sitting on my desk here with  5 or 6 quite random food ideas that I'm going to get organised to try during the week. I never quite know what it is that makes certain ideas stand out in a magazine - it may be a conversation Rick and I have had previously, a certain subject matter we're focused on, or something a little different that peeks my fancy, maybe a technique or combination of flavours, or a particullary alluring photo... not sure. It always feels quite random after a session like that, but very stimulating at the same time.

A useful reminder occasionally,  that while certain aspects of the business can become disproportionately draining, simply becos thats the way life is sometimes,  when I cut thru all the extranueous stuff, and go back to focusing simply on food, I am always reminded that in fact, I love what I do, and am actually therefore very lucky!

We called into The Good Food Company the other day, when we were over at the Mount, and had a wander round the shop picking up things that appealed. It is a very inspiring space to wander through I must say, becos the range is different to what you normally encounter, and covers the sorts of ingredients that we like to work with.

  I was initially on a mission to find  some fresh tofu, becos theres a couple of recipes I want to try that require it and they had that in stock, and I then managed to get sidetracked by  some interesting looking sausages from a company over in Te Aroha that I'd just read about, so got some of those too, becos we are both big fans of good charcuterie.

Their vegetables look particularly appealing, and I came home with leeks and red cabbage and beetroot. The red cabbage was becos I'm still trying to emulate the coleslaw that I had at Cafe Hanoi awhile back, which appealed immensely - made another seasame dressing over the weekend for another dish, and had some left over, and I think inadvertently I may have stumbled onto a close facsimile - so will make some coleslaw for lunch tom.

The leeks we had with the beef cassarole that I'd made earlier in the week from a David Lebovitz recipe - the combination of chocolate and hoisin warranted my attention. A very rich, flavoursome cassarole.

And just now for lunch we've had a salad that I make rather often, whenever I can get my hands on some nice looking beetroot. Grated raw beetroot, grated carrot, in roughly equal proportions, ( the Kitchenaid makes short shift of what would otherwise be a tedious job) a handful of raisins, all doused in a good dollop of Stams Tart Apple Syrup. I usually leave it to sit for half an hour or so, and it develops a lovely pool of crimson juice. I was going to take a photo to show evidence, but discovered my camera battery needs recharging, and my need to show you wasn't strong enough to overrule my desire to eat lunch there and then. Necessitated to be fair, by the fact we have a small wedding due to arrive at the restaurant shortly for lunch, for which I need to be present over there, so I needed to get our lunch out of the way.

The rest of the beetroot I've roasted whole in its skin, and later this afternoon I'll peel that, slice it and marinate it in our reduced orange sauce, as my modern adaption of my mothers pickled beetroot that used to always be in our fridge when I was growing up. She would have boiled the beetroot and used malt vinegar - I prefer to roast becos I think it brings out a sweeter flavour in the vegetable, and find the taste of malt vinegar just too strong these days. I must be getting precious in my old age! Will probably add a bit of white wine vinegar to the orange sauce, just to increase the acidity levels.

Rick loves beetroot in sandwiches, and as his level of training is starting to inch up again, its nice to have stuff that is easily accessible for him to eat on his return. That will keep him happy and if I also make Tan squares this weekend, then I really will be in favour!!

I do a reasonable amount of experimenting in the home kitchen. I have a rather large pile of recipes that I've printed off the internet or photocopied out of magazines sitting in a box, and every so often when the urge takes me, I go thru them looking for inspiration and have a major cooking session working thru a number of different ideas. But its usually quite literally a feast or a famine. I'm either trying 4 or 5 different ideas in one day, or doing nothing for weeks, as my focus moves onto other things. What I'm currently trying to aim for is to exercise a little more discipline, and trial some new flavours each week, so that we're constantly ticking over new possibilities - rather than a great flurry of activity every so often.

We shall see!

A lunch like we had today though is definitly not new - we've been making it for years, and I'm always surprised by how much Rick enjoys it, becos I used to worry whether it had enough grunt for him, given his level of energy output. Its the sort of food that fills you up, but in a nice way, if that doesn't sound inane.Our move to more vegetarian eating at home is quite deliberate, and is a process that I suspect is just going to intensify as we go on. Its a nice way of eating.

And its now later in the afternoon and I've made the coffees for the wedding group and left Rhonda to deal with the winding down stage. And just purely as a bye the bye, below are a couple of photos of the sweets we served with the wedding cake today ( my camera battery has now recharged!) - a range of macarons, and some baby citrus tarts, slightly bruleed and served with the very last of the autumn raspberries, that have been absolutely stupendous this year. Those plates and cheese, together with the wedding cake, made for a nice leisurely nibble with coffee....

I have to head back over to work tonite, although we not looking like we're going to be that busy due to that wedding happening in London. I've been sort of avoiding going near the TV, becos although I'm a republican thru and thru, I have this nasty suspicion that watching the goings on will be addictive, and I'll end up locked in place. Fascinating how much of a focus it has become - to the point that people will stay home to watch all evening, even though as I understand she isn't going to appear till about 10pm - so we have ages to wait to get our first glimpse of the dress.

Ah well. Sales of Somerset at Home lamb shanks and pies have gone up dramatically in the last few days - so while people may not be coming to the restaurant, at least I can derive some satisfaction from the fact they'll be eating our food while they stay glued to their TV sets.

Some consolation I guess...

The day has dawned steely gray and chilly, and after taking the dogs down below for their early morning run, and breakfast over the papers, I decided to head into the kitchen and turn the oven on, and play round with some recipes that I wanted to trial, just becos it felt like that kind of day.

Rick has subsequently headed out on the bike for a couple of hours and when he gets home, I'll have this chocolate slice iced and ready to be eaten, together with the cheese muffins leftover from lunch which I made  from a Richard Till recipe that I ripped out of the Sunday paper a couple of weeks ago.

The chocolate slice recipe comes from Dan Lepards website - one of my main references for baking and bread ideas - and there was something about the combination of a dark beer and oats and chocolate that piqued my interest.

Am using the Wobbly Boot dark beer rather than stout, cos don't have any stout or guinness in the pantry, and have substituted dried cherries for the raisins, becos we have a carton  of cherries that are now out of date, so we can't sell them, but I'll find things like this to use them up in.

The slice has just come out of the oven and is currently too warm to ice, but will make the icing shortly  - the addition of golden syrup to chocolate icing kind of intrigued me - and will await my husbands return so I can justify having a piece. All in the name of research of course!

I am currently finishing rereading Gay Bilsons "Plenty", which is not so much a book as rather a series of erudite essays revolving around the subject matter of food.

She has marked credibility in my world becos she was involved in 2 of Australia's pioneering restaurants from my generation, Tony's Bon Gout, and Berowra Waters Inn.

She also happens to be a luminous writer, with a turn of phrase, that I've found myself going back over a number of times. There is much to admire.

I am reading it in bites though, preferring to put the book down and go and do something else before returning to continue reading, since it is  so intense.

The section on congee, ( a simple rice and broth dish, much loved by the Asian cultures) got me to thinking about lunch, and it seemed like a perfectly natural step to extrapolate that out to bulghur wheat which I knew I had in the pantry, unlike either rice or, unusually for me, any chicken stock in the fridge.

So a pot of wheat got put on to cook and I returned to another essay. When that was softened I tossed some of the Ellsgrove Olive Oil thru the warm  grains - then picked a large bunch of both basil and parsley, and was rewarded by the strong smell of sweet basil thru the house, rather than dog...

They got finely chopped up and added to seeded and chopped tomato,green beans and corn cut of the cob, and then some finely diced goats cheese from Te Aroha. All tossed together, it made a perfect lunch for my here and now.

So often when I go to cook something, and I riff on an idea in my head , I don't quite achieve what it is I was setting out to attain, but today both Rick and I ate the salad with relish, and proclaimed it perfect.

Like it when that happens!

( We probably eat more goat cheese than we do cow, and this is one of my favourite, (along with the feta from Over the Moon,) which I buy direct from the farm. We're hoping to take the staff over to visit to have a look at the herd and the cheese making in the next couple of weeks.Something to organise...

Just been catching up on some internet reading, and one of David Lebovitzs latest blogs appealed.

I enjoy Davids take on things, and he has considerable credibility in my eyes, becos of the years of hard yards that he has done in professional kitchens.

He has a rather enviable lifestyle these days of living in Paris, and being paid to travel here there and everywhere and write about food matters, and it is a life I very much enjoy reading about.

This recipe for peanut sauce just sort of demands to be made, so I think I've found lunch for today....

We did a private cookschool yesterday morning - an interesting group of people from all over New Zealand. And we have another class today. Its unususal for us to do back to back classes these days - I quite deliberately set the schedule so that we get gaps between classes, mainly to help us hit each one feeling fresh. Enthusiasm from us is an important component of the classes, and the reality is, that even though the classes are very enjoyable to do, they are also very tiring, and I learnt in the early days of doing them, that if we did too many on consequtive days, then we would inevitably find it a bit elusive to dredge up that sense of joie de vivre.

Nothing like tiredness to wear you down, be it mental, emotional or physical! Or sometimes, a combination of all 3!

Had to get the lasagne made yesterday afternoon, that Courteney and Rick are taking down to Taupo tonite, to feed those who are joining them for dinner prior to the Taupo race. And while in the kitchen, I also made David Lebovitz's Chocolate covered Caramelised Matzoh Crunch, the picture of which in his latest newsletter appealed to me.

I had no idea what matzoh was, so had to find a recipe for that and make that first before I could make the crunch. Pleased to see it used wholemeal flour, which allowed me to use some of the beautiful Hislops flour that we're getting up from Kaikoura. Rolled that out at the same time as I was rolling out the pasta for the lasagna - but not quite sure what to expect from the end result.

Courteney eats alot of wraps - she fills them with various things and toasts them in the toasted sandwich maker - an effective and filling lunch. And it occurred to me as I pulled these crackers out of the oven that they were really a crisp version of the wraps. Lots of cultures have unleaven bread incorporated into their diet, and these are yet another version that would have had good keeping qualities, which would have been part of the appeal I imagine. Jewish in origin I believe.

Had to slap Courteneys hands away - as she started appreciatively nibbling, to ensure I had enough to follow the caramalised recipe, and again embarked, without a clear picture in my head of what was going to emerge. But one of the reasons I like David Lebovitzs recipes and have most of his cookbooks, is the way he clearly imparts steps in a recipe, and explains enough to make things flow logically.

The resulting crunch, which we had when we came back over to the house after dinner service, when the chocolate topping had finally set, was everything I'd hoped it would be. An unusual combination of toffee, chocolate and cracker base, that sounds bizarrely disparate, but infact melds together into a very moreish whole.

Hmm...

Rick had watched the video that I'd linked too in an earlier blog about Thomas Keller poaching an egg, and he followed the instructions to the letter with some duck eggs that we'd been given, and produced a truly magnificent poached egg. The best. Ever!

Christmas baking to get underway tomorrow, while I'm home alone. Need to get the fruit for the cake macerating, and the mince made. Have a couple of puddings left over from last year. We talk about candying citrus peel in this cookschool series, becos we've been doing our own for a number of years now, and I use that and my own candied cherries in the cake, appreciating the flavour differential to the commercially produced ones.

It just somehow makes me feel virtuous! Time constraints don't allow me to do everything from scratch - but somethings are worth the imput of effort becos they end up so much better from what is otherwise available, and sometimes the skill needed to do so is very minimal. Its just a case of knowing how too. Adn that is where the cookschools come in, and I'm always impressed by the people who tell me years down the track how they absorbed some information that we gave them and its become part of their regular cooking rituals.  There is no doubt that I am a conspicuously better cook as a result of the information I've gleaned over the years, and I figure that just makes what I do in the kitchen so much more enjoyable and satisfying.

I felt under a bit of pressure to get the lasagne all assembled yesterday, becos I knew we had the class on this morning and Richard would probably be heading down to Taupo early and would want his lasagne ready to go, so knew I was on a mission to get it all done, especially the sort of quantities I was making.  But the reality is that I love cooking, and deep down I'm flattered to be asked to contribute. I'd far rather they were all eating something that I knew I'd made, which is nourishing and sustaining.

Cooking is about sharing - and I'm always very happy to do so.

This short video shows one of our cooking gurus, Thomas Keller, poaching eggs, and it is loaded with interesting little hints on how to get the perfect poached egg.

I happen to think my husband is one of the best chefs in NZ, and he constantly amazes me with his technical ability and understanding of how flavours come together.

But...

He can't poach an egg decently , and I don't think I'm telling stories out of school by mentioning the fact. We've tried periodically over the years, when we've craved Eggs Benedict  at home, but we've never managed to do it properly.

Old staff who've worked in cafes have told us what tricks they use, but still we've never persevered enough to actually master the art, possibly becos the need to serve poached eggs at Somerset is non existant.

However, on the basis of what I learnt watching this, I am going to give it another go, becos I adore runny poached eggs...

Thomas Keller is coming out to NZ with Heston Blumenthal and Neil Perry - a lineup of completely stellar chefs, to do an evening at Cape Kidnappers. These guys are as good as it gets in the food world, so the idea of 3 of them together at one time in one place, is almost too much of a good thing. But I am sure they will get a massive response.

Exciting stuff!

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.