Comings and Goings

Its always nice to prepare a special meal for arrivals & departures.

In January Peter's family visited from the UK for the first time. For their arrival we did an old favourite, lamb salad with spinach, kumara & capsicum. It's good to offer a salad when people have recently been sitting in a plane for 24+ hours. In addition, New Zealand lamb is a good start & kumara is a specialty. If you want to make it outside New Zealand then a sweet potato will suffice. I am not sure about varieties. I first made it in February last year. The recipe suggest you slow roast the kumara, onion & capsicum in a pan then set aside while you cook the lamb. I find that for a crowd my pan isn't big enough & the kumara doesn't cook evenly. I suggest you roast the vegetables with olive oil in the oven at about 180 for around 30-40 mins. I always like to heat the pan first as it gives the vegetables a bit of a start. Cook the lamb separately & assemble as described.

For a light pudding, we had grilled summer stone fruits. For 6 use about 1kg of fruit - a mix of plums, apricots, peaches, nectarines, cherries. I added raspberries because I had some in the fridge. Halve the fruit, remove stones & place cut side up in a roasting dish - leave cherries whole. Sift over about 1/2 cup icing sugar & put under a hot grill for about 8-10 minutes. Drizzle over a little liqueur or sprinkle with a little more icing sugar. Serve with home-made vanilla ice cream or the best ice cream you can buy.

To farewell our visitors we made a cobb salad. This is perfect when the salad vegetables, including avocados, are at their best. If you haven't tried it, you can't imagine how delicious this is. It seems fiddly but it isn't. You can just mush it all together in a salad bowl but the careful composition makes it so stunning on the plate and I think it helps to meld the flavours just right. For pudding I made a plum clafoutis.
The following night we farewelled Phoebe who has now left us for those warmer northern climes. We prepared her favourite meal which also happens to be her birthday dinner - Chicken Za'atar & Fattoush. For pudding she requested our family chocolate mousse. Tensions were running a little high as cooking & packing occurred simultaneously & we nearly forgot to serve it and did forget to photograph it. That's probably a good thing as I am not going to give you the recipe. Only Phoebe, Isabel & I know how to make it & they're not telling either.

Now "around" the table is reduced to the two of us sitting at one end of a very large table. I suspect our eating habits will change somewhat - all recipes will be for 2 unless specified. Rest assured however, we will not be depriving ourselves of delicious meals. Watch this space.

Eating on the road

It's often nice when you go away to eat in. It saves money and if you are in a small place where choice is limited, you are more likely to get food you like if you make it yourself. The trick is to plan. We recently spent 4 nights away & we cooked in for 3 nights & had a great meal out on the last night.

The first night we had lamb steaks with couscous & courgettes. We took the wherewithal for the first night, including buying the lamb steaks at our butcher on the way out. We stayed at Sage Cottage on the Brodie wine estate in Martinborough. It was kitted out with a barbecue and good sized pans & serving dishes. The lamb was rubbed with cumin, salt & pepper & the courgettes were tossed in olive oil, provided in the cottage from the estate, salt & pepper - then both were cooked on the barbecue. All I had to do in the kitchen was prepare the couscous which involved lightly frying a couple of spring onions then adding the couscous with an equal quantity of boiling water & setting aside about 10 minutes. When done, I turned through a little olive oil, some toasted pinenuts (toasted the night before & packed in an airtight jar) & some roughly chopped parsley. We enjoyed Schoc chocolates from Greytown with our coffee. My favourite is the new lavender salt caramel individual chocolate.

The next day we drove through Feilding where we stopped at the Farmer's Market. It's worth checking out market days before you leave home because that can be a good source of interesting local produce. We bought lamb & mint sausages from the Wai-Ora Lamb people, new season's potatoes, and some tomatoes for the salad. We brought lettuce from our garden & a few salad items in the chilly bin. We bought some organic kamut bread & Cranbrook pates for starters & finished up with delicious peaches. It was quick & easy to barbeque the sausages & boil the potatoes then toss with oil & parsley.

I had brought a packet of fettucine & picked up some prosciutto in Greytown, so on the third night we bought a packet of frozen peas at the supermarket & had pasta with prosciutto & peas, and a salad. This motel wasn't so well stocked with kitchen implements so I had to cook the pasta in 3 saucepans but it was quick & easy & delicious.

On the last night we treated ourselves to a meal at Element Cafe in Whanganui, which I thoroughly recommend. In addition to outstanding food, the highlight was the guitar player - a very talented young man who, we discovered, is off to Auckland in a couple of weeks to study bio-medicine!

Finally, I am seeking your help. Can anyone identify this mystery vegetable that has popped up in the garden? I assume it was something that has seeded in the compost, so a vegetable we ate last summer. I am hoping it will become apparent as it increases in size but for now I am mystified. Resembles a courgette but is quite squat. Scallopini perhaps? Any thoughts?