31 August 2011

I have been acting as the daughters ‘prep slave’ as she has had some huge photo shoots on at the moment and has needed a little help with the shopping and some amount of the chopping. I must admit that I was both surprised and flattered when she asked me and I felt very nervous that I might muck up.

I can’t tell you the dishes that I helped to prep as they are for her articles in the Sunday Star Times but watching the photographer at work this morning bought back memories of the food shoots we did for Gourmet Magazine. 

Being the publisher and editor of a collection of magazines in the 80’s was one of the most exciting times of my life. I loved the world of producing such beautiful magazines and being able combine some of my cooking and artistic skills and to work with the assistance of a brilliant team.

Anyway it is the daughter’s time and she shows a brilliance for the things that she is producing and an amazing for-sight to follow the career that she loves and shines at.

The son from the Bay of Islands is down in the big city moving his step daughter in to a new flat and he came for the night.  It was wonderful to catch up with his news as I have not seen him since the daughter’s wedding. As a child he showed a gift where fishing was concerned and he would fish for hours at the end of the Russell wharf. I remember he was staying with my mother in Russell and she would take down his breakfast and lunch to the wharf as he was so committed to the chore of catching every last sprat in the universe.  When she went down to get him for dinner at 6pm he asked plaintively if he could have dinner on there as well?  Needless to say he was dragged home, as he was only five at the time, but he was up at first light again the next day.  He has gone on to be one of the most highly respected fishermen in the Bay and now he runs a highly successful deep sea charter  boat. He tells me that he has won most of the prizes at this years club prize giving. 

I am getting my ‘mojo’ back.  I have almost finished two weeks of rest from my job.  I have had some excellent counselling during which it was suggested that I watched a program called the ‘Big silence’ or I think that is what it was called. Any way, it follows the journey of four people who chose to spend two weeks at a ‘silence retreat’.  I won’t go into it any further but I have taken some of the experiences and lessons they learnt and translated them into a gradual and manageable learning experience for myself I  this was in the hope that it would help me control my anxiety levels in the future or at least give me some new skills to put something in place when faced with situations that might cause me anxiety.

So this is what I have been doing.  I call it my ‘silent routine’ not very original I know.  So for four hours each day I live in silence.  Not talking, phone off, no TV or radio and no computer.  You have no idea how hooked one is on using the above as entertainment and a tool to inhibit looking at one’s life and relationships in a very quiet and meaningful way.  To empty one’s mind of the dross that we carry is really interesting and coupled with some deep breathing some amazing revelations happen.  Try it but it is is very very hard. I don’t think I could do the two weeks but who knows.

Back to the domestic issues.  Curried sausages to night because the husband likes them. Curried sausages is a meal that brings back memories for both of us as this was fashionable in the sixties. But in those days the sausages were boiled and served in a very pale not very curried sauce containing apples and sultanas. Now days curried sausages are much more exciting and they are browned first which makes this a more appealing dish. The left over rice will be the makings of fried rice for tomorrow night.

Tomatoes have hit outrageous prices this winter and as I try to buy local and in season so besides the tomatoes from the green house we have gone ‘tomatoless’ as I know many families have this year.  But yesterday I found a tray of tomatoes labelled seconds.  I have bought them home and they really are fine but just funny shapes and a few little black spotsso I will make a very spicy relish to get us though the rest of the cold months. Excellent folded though pasta or thinned down and tofu added.   

Curried sausages

Brown six sausages of any type and set aside.

Make a sauce with of one chopped onion and two peeled and chopped apples in one tablespoon of oil and the fat from the sausages until they are soft.

Stir in one tablespoon of curry powder (choose whatever strength you like but I think mild is best) and cook until it sizzles. 

Then add two tablespoons of flour, 1 teaspoon stock powder and 1 teaspoon sugar and a cup of milk and stir over a low heat until it thickens.

Add back the sausages.  You can add cooked potatoes and some peas for a one dish meal. Or serve with boiled rice.

Fried rice

Fry together one finely chopped onion and 4 chopped rashers of bacon. At this stage you can add anything you fancy spring onions, grated carrot, crushed pineapple, a little cabbage and stir together until the additives are soft. (I add chopped prawns as the husband likes them and doesn’t eat bacon.)

Stir in two cups of cooked rice and add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, more if you need to, and a beaten egg.  Cook until the egg is cooked and a crust begins to form on the bottom of the mixture.

Spicy tomato relish

Chop two onions and six tomatoes. It is better if you skin the tomatoes but who has time.

Put in a large saucepan and cover with white vinegar and add 1 cup of white sugar. I use white vinegar and sugar because I do not want the final result to be too dark.

Add 1 tablespoon of curry powder, 1 teaspoon each of salt and pepper.

Cook for about an hour at simmer until thick and bottle. The mixture will reduce by half.

Cool a little before bottling.

miranda robinson: 29 August 2011

miranda robinson: 29 August 2011: Yesterday I had lunch with four old friends. The operative word is ‘old’. Both in age and the time we have know each other. The four o...

29 August 2011

Yesterday I had lunch with four old friends.  The operative word is ‘old’.  Both in age and the time we have know each other.  The four of us have known each other for the past forty years, we have had ten husbands between us and produced ten children. 

There is something comforting about old friends and the reminiscing about the things that we all know, remember and understand.  We have been though a lot together.  Marriages (both our own and our children), divorces (both our own and our children’s), the deaths of spouses and unfortunately the death of one of our children.  We have wept together over the deaths of our parents and our mutual friends.  We  understand each other without words. There is unspoken telepathy, a connection that time and experiences has dictated.  As one of these friends once said to me ‘we are bound together by our secrets’ and in some cases our lies. We can't afford to fall out, there is a cement that will continue until our own demises.

Lunch was a quiche studded with black olives and little red cherry tomatoes. The filling was creamy and rich, full of finely sliced onions which gave it textural element which all quiches need. The quiche was followed by chocolate mousse, rich and a perfect ending.

In the late seventies a friend and I had a little restaurant called Eve and I.  One of the main lunch time draw-cards was the quiche that we served and let me tell you men do eat quiche.  And they come back for seconds. But I still can’t get my children to eat quiche now as the were bought up eating the leftovers for their dinner.  Although I say men do eat quiche the husband wont. I now serve a self crusting quiche if I need something to serve to someone drops in suddenly and stays on for lunch.

With the husband still away it was to me a simple meal in the evening.  I make an Asian broth, once again from the store cupboard.  I started to make this at work when I was trying to find a way to like tofu. It works and is delicious. I also make this at home and I add a few prawns from the freezer (soaked in warm water until thawed) or it is also very fresh and appealing if you just poach sliced white fish in it for just a few minutes.

Someone asked me the other day about tofu and if there is any way to cook it or serve it which makes it more palatable.  I have always run a mile from the stuff and have tried it in many guises.  Stir fried, deep fried egg and bread crumbed but firm tofu in the broth is the only way I have found that I like the stuff.

RECIPES

Self crusting quiche

Mix together:

1 cup milk

1 cup cream

1 cup white flour

4 eggs

1 cup of tasty cheese

1 tablespoon grainy mustard

1 teaspoon chicken stock powder

This is the basic mixture and the things that you can add are unlimited. I have used a drained tin of salmon, a cup of creamed corn, grated zucchini, softened  onion and bacon. You can bake it at 150c for about 40 minutes but do not overcook, softer is better.

Chocolate mousse

This has to be quick and easy and as I always have cream in the fridge, I am almost ashamed to admit this in this age of the fat police, and the rest of the ingredients in the pantry cupboard.  I can also make this on the boat with the help of long life cream, it works.

I use Nigella Lawson’s recipe as it fast and easy

3 cups mini marshmallows
100gms softened
250 gms best quality semisweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces
1/4 cup hot water from a recently boiled kettle
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt the marshmallows, butter, chocolate, and water in a heavy-based saucepan. Cool but don’t let it go cold.

Whip the cream with the vanilla and fold together.

Asian broth

This is a true fridge/pantry cupboard broth but at work I can keep everything for a hasty lunch with or without tofu or fish.  If I am at home I can add finely chopped coriander and mint.

2 cups of water

2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce

1 tablespoon lime juice from one of those little plastic lime bottles

1 tablespoon fish sauce

A good squeeze from the tubes of lemon grass, coriander, garlic and ginger

1 teaspoon of chicken stock power

Simmer together and adjust any flavouring to your own personal taste.

28 August 2011

The husband set of for Australia yesterday evening.  He had a cold and really was feeling miserable plus his eye was sore and he wasn’t feeling great.

So here I am with a list of things that I should have done when he was here but somehow I never did. I think this includes spending a little more time in bed in the morning and catching up on my reading!

I have started with the fridge and getting rid of all those bottles and jars that I know we will never use. 

When we lived up north I used to clean out the fridge on a Sunday morning  and we would have what the children used to call ‘fridge soup’.  All the weeks left-overs would go into a pot, a few unused boiled potatoes, the end of the cabbage, those end bits of meat finely diced and onions augmented with perhaps  a tin of baked beans or corn. Just add chicken stock and there is meal fit for a special family.

If there was enough meat left over then it would be turned into fritters, as special treat with tomato sauce.  Add some grated potato for extra ‘crispy’.  So really you can fritter anything but you have to make the right batter.

I have been making yogurt for the constitution and as the recipe  makes too much for one, and as the husband wouldn’t be seen dead eating it, I have to find ways to use it. So this morning I made an apple, yogurt and olive oil cake which has been in one of the files I found when I used to do the recipes for tele text, a real blast from the past. The step daughter had just turned up and there is something so luxurious about eating warm cake, drinking good coffee while sitting in the sun.  Oh bliss.

Now that the husband is not here I can eat what I want to and eat healthily. The garden has wonderful little leeks and the spinach is great and with a handful of little last tomatoes from the glass house makes dinner look rosy. I might even throw in the last of the frozen runner beans which have turned out to be positively delicious.

Meringues and run and raisin ice cream are on the cards for tomorrow. A lot of dill in the glass house and the mint and parsley that is just romping away. So that means Green Goddess mayo as well. My friend, Phillipa, seems to get hers really green and I will endeavour to do the same in the morning.

The weather is wonderful at the moment even the frosts are gone for the meantime at least. Planting is happening as it feels right but one can be lulled into a false sense of security. But two grafted tomato plants are in the new places in the green house and a new courgette. I hope they grow and produce earlier and give me a little more variety to the diet.

Fritter batter

1 cup of white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon chicken stock powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together until you have a thick coating batter.  You may need a little more milk.

Fold in any finely chopped or grated mix that you might fancy.  Salmon and spring onion. Carrot, onion and cabbage.  Corn and bacon. If you have it you can fritter it.

Apple, yogurt and olive oil cake

Beat 3 eggs, 2/3 cup of yogurt,1 cup of brown sugar and ½ cup olive oil until they are thick and creamy. Fold in two cups of cooked apple.

Sift 2 cups of white flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Fold these two mixtures together and tip into a cake tin and bake 45 minutes at 150c.

Origins of Emails to myself

Recently we had some friends from England, Peter and Helen Cleland, on the boat with us. We had some radical impromptu meals which they seemed to love.

Helen wanted to know how to ‘throw’ food together and I promised to ‘throw’ together a little book of some sorts of things I cook in my own haphazard manner.

Mind you, my food is meant to look haphazard and thrown together but in truth is it the meals are planned meticulously. Menus planned well in advance and shopping done to meet this planning and this makes things much easier for me. Time to drink and talk more than I should!

Peter Cleland happens to be the son of the wonderful woman who first inspired me to cook. Nora Cleland awakened in me what I consider to be a one of the few gifts that I have. I also found that my birth mother also has this gift (although her palate is fading and she is inclined to be like the old woman in the vicar of Dibley who made anchovy and marshmallow sandwiches or raisin and marmite quiche}.

I use the term ‘gift’ modestly but this gift has been passed onto my stupendous daughter Laura, who, I hesitate to say is using her talent and taking her gift to the next level. I never thought I would/could say this…. but she is almost a better cook than I am.

Most of the things I cook are based on the things that are available in the garden, the store cupboard and as a result of my unplanned grocery shopping.

I loved Nigel Slater’s book when he wrote a sort of diary of what he had cooked for his family over a year. The book was punctuated with little anecdotes which makes the book real and heart warming.

I read recipe books in bed and watch endless cooking programs but rarely do I use a recipe but I gather ideas in my sub conscious until needed.

Cooking is my therapy, ‘my act of service and love’. It is my creative outlet, my downfall which makes me fat at times. It is my torment, it is my triumph and my happiness. And I suppose it is my obsession.

Boating salads

Hot smoked salmon and tomato
Asian prawn
Celery apple and walnut

Lemon slice

ANZAC Monday

I am trying to eat the bits in the fridge instead of feeding them to the chooks. I know the scraps come out as eggs but as they are off the lay it seems a bit of a waste.

We had welsh rabbit for breakfast to eat up the left over mashed potato. When I lived in high country I used to make this for the shearers for morning tea and they loved it.

½ mashed potato
½ grated tasty cheese
1 egg yolk
1 small finely chopped onion
1 finely chopped tomato
White pepper to season

Mix it together and heap on brown bread that you have toasted on one side. Put under the grill until they are bubbling nicely.

They are substantial and will keep the most hungry going until lunch or you can serve them for lunch.

Another thing that I do with left over mashed potato is gnocchi. There is something about mashed potato, you can never make enough, I always make too much. My mash would kill a stable of race horses. I remember Grahame Thorne, a friend of the past, making mashed potatoes by mashing the boiling water back into the potato, it was disgusting. You need lots of butter and cream whipped into the well boiled potatoes. Leave on the element to dry off any water that might be lingering in the bottom of the pot.

For little expense and a little time you can have a substantial meal. I recently taught a couple of you girls I work with to make these. They were enchanted when the little dumpling rose to the top of the boiling water that we had popped them into. And even more impressed when they were laid on a deep rich tomato sauce and covered with a little cream and grated cheese and baked in a hot oven until bubbling and little brown crusts of deliciousness form on the top.

1 cup mashed potato
½ cup of flour (this will alter according to how soft the mash is)

Mix the two together with your hands until you feel it forming a soft firmish dough

Divide the mixture into four even pieces and roll them out like we used to roll plastercine until they are about an inch thick. Then cut the ropes into I inch cubes. You are meant to squish it with a fork but I just put my finger into them to flatten them before dropping them into a pot of boiling water a few at a time. The little dumpling will rise to the top and them you take them out when they rise to the top. Drain on a clean dry tea towel before popping them into a dish which you have placed a layer of tomato sauce. Dribble over ½ cup of cream and sprinkle with ½ grated cheese. You can place them on white sauce cover with a little white sauce and sprinkle with cheese.

Cleaning Saturday

On Saturdays Robyn and her trusty husband come out to the farm to help and clean. They have been with us for seven years now and since we moved out of the city they still make the journey into the country every Saturday, come hell or high water. I try to make some thing interesting for lunch. This weekend it was white bean, tuna with fettuccine.

Empty a tin of white bean and a tin of chunky tuna into a bowl with half a teaspoon of dry chicken stock powder and the rind and juice of one lemon. I usually add a good handful of finely chopped of flat leafed parsley and a good dollop of grainy mustard. Boil pasta until soft, it needs to be well cooked I think. You can heat this mixture in the microwave before adding the cooked fettuccine.

I usually try to get some preparation cooking done for the following week. Bake a cake, biscuits, make a casserole, make the bread for the week. I also pick and prep the things that have grown in the gardening during the week while I am at work.

I picked the last of the sweet corn and the leggy basil and the bolting coriander which became Coriander/basil almond pesto ready to pile on spaghetti for a hurried meal or spooned onto some grilled chicken or fish.

I found two little cucumbers nestling in the last browning leaves of the vine. I peeled them and made an Asian inspired Dressing by mixing tablespoon of sweet chilli sauce, with the juice of a lime, ½ tablespoon of soya sauce. Tip over the chopped cucumber and chill in the fridge for a long as you can bear it.

There are vases of nasturtium flowers on the window sills punctuated with bunches of rocket. I don’t like rocket much but the big plump leaves look really flashy mixed in with the bright orange flowers.

The last of the green tomatoes need to be picked to be made into green tomato sauce of chutney or green fried tomatoes. Green fried tomatoes.

Feijoas abound for my coconut and almond cake and the last of the quinces are ready to be made into jam, paste. They lambs from last year are in the freezer and this year I make a delicious quince and lamb casserole. The little lamb chops are delicious with Herb butter

I have started to use pulses, beans, rice and pasta more now as they are always at hand.
But recently an African friend has introduced me to dried corn which can be used as Dhal but I have been making a very interesting peas and corn soup.

peas and corn soup
fried rice
Estelle’s chicken, almond and orange risotto

1 May 2011

In spite of the Royal Wedding it was quiet on the food front.

I cooked a leg of lamb slowly in the oven after covering it in herbs from the garden and crunching 10 cloves of garlic on top.  Dribble with olive oil and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. It needs to be wrapped in several layers of foil and cooked in a low oven for about 4 hours.

The meet should just fall off the bone and can be attacked with a couple of spoons which avoids the trouble of carving at the table.

I made a bean, tomato onions mess which I spooned around the lamb.  The bean and lambs mixture needs to put in a large serving dish that has a lip so that the sauce does not slop over the side onto the table.

Chop two medium onions and sauté until soft then add four chopped tomatoes chook down and add 1tsp sugar and lots of salt and white pepper.  Then add two tins of cannellini beans and simmer until some of the liquid has gone.  Spoon into the platter and lay the lamb on top and sprinkle liberally with finely chopped parsley.

Sunday lunch was a kind of a cottage pie made of the left over lamb mixed with grated carrot and cooked onion.  I mixed in the left over bean mixture with a packet of Maggie Brown Onion gravy.  I sliced up some of the ciabatta bread which was left over and spread it with butter and put it on top of the mixture and then baked it in the oven until the bread was brown and crispy.  There was the last jar of tamarillo chutney which bought back memories of other meals that this is perfect accompaniment for.

Scrambled eggs and rice pudding for supper I think.

27 August 2011

It was one of those nights.  The neighbour had promised me lemons for lemon honey and cordial and so I popped in only to find that they had some friends staying. 

Well  one drink led to another drink and the husband was called to come from home and join every one for dinner.  Homemade vegetable soup, which had been bubbling away on top of the wood burner, followed by vegetarian lasagne. I must admit I looked at the makings of the lasagne, which I spotted on the  top of the stove when I arrived, didn’t look very  attractive but I was proved wrong. The flavours were wonderful layered and intense and when I got home I asked the husband if he had liked it.  He had two helpings. And he had no idea that there was no meat in it.  The top was covered with loads of stringy mozzarella cheese which I find has little taste without being mixed with other cheeses but texturally it is wonderful and the strings always cause some merriment when the dish is served.

I had asked the husband to bring down the left over meat pie we had had the night before but it looked rather paltry when he arrived so I popped it into the back of their  fridge.  I will rescue it when I pop down later to deliver some cordial this morning.

A few weeks ago I stayed the night with the daughter  before travelling on one of those hideously early flight to Australia to visit the grand children and their parent. I took one of those mysterious cooked Chinese ducks that you see hanging in the window of the local Chinese restaurants.  They look so glossy, ebony in fact, rather like the polished woodwork on a boat. But  the heads being left on make then look rather as if they have been lying on the road for too long.  Somehow, when the duck is stuffed into a white crinkly plastic bag with no protection from dust and germs, the whole exercise becomes even more foreign. But I have never managed to cook a duck that has tasted so exotic as this is such a wonderful excuse to have the experience at home without the hassel.

Anyway I digress.  That evening we tore of the chunks of grey flesh into bite size pieces and chopped up some of the skin to make an avocado, melon and spring onion salad with my secret Asian dressing. This dressing is so good that I used to make it at Christmas as give it away as part of a little hamper of homemade goodies. 

 I insisted that the daughter put the carcass in the  freezer for me so that I could take it home when I returned from Australia.  So, after considerable nagging to get the ‘thing’ out of the freezer, I took the creature home a couple of weeks later.  I simmered it for two hours with lots of soy sauce, spring onions, ginger, a little palm sugar and a diced carrot and of course water to cover.  After the beast had cooled I stripped off the remaining meat, of which there was surprisingly a lot, sliced the skin finely, put the liquid back on the stove to reduce by half and then poured the flesh.  I left this to cool and then put it in the fridge for the fat the solidify.  The next morning I skimmed of the layer of rich yellow fat, to be used later in the week for roast potatoes.   I have been enjoyed the rich duck soup for lunch for the last two days. It is dark, velverty and comforting and a testament to not wasting anything.

My mother had a thing about chicken carcasses.  Before she died or rather before Alzheimer’s crippled her capacity to function as the inelegant, vibrant and wonderful human we remember her as, the only dish she could make was Chicken and Asparagus. A concoction, with her diminished mental capacity, became a wonder to behold and somewhat scary.  As Mother made this offering quite often there was the resultant quandary as to what to do with the left over carcasses. It was inevitable that these offering were prepared on a Friday and the rubbish was collected on the following Thursday and then there was also the problem of flies and smell.  So the darling put them in plastic bags and when I went to clean out the flat, when I moved her into a more supervised care environment ,I found twenty three of the little gems wrapped up in white plastic shrouds stuffed in her little fridge freezer.

I will write more about my mother and Alzheimer’s in a blog of its own as I feel that this is not only warranted but could take time and thought to get across the true meaning and value that she added to so many lives.

vegetarian lasagne

meat pie

avocado, melon and spring onion salad

secret Asian dressing

Chicken and Asparagus

15 August 2011

It was a busy weekend in a rushed kind of way. We had a night at the cottage for the first time in two years. The story of the cottage is a magical one, one of joy and success and a feeling of completeness.  It has bought to me a feeling of happiness and contentment and in some distant part of my mind, a sense of  achievement, that I have never had.

The Cottage

I had always dreamed of a magical cottage it was inspired by my reading of an author called SARK.  She is of course from California and one of thos out there women who give you permission to rest, nap and smell the roses.  She came into my life when I was desperatly tryint to get over my break up with my second husband....more of that later....and gave me that kind of spiritial pat and the heart which we all need at times.

Anyway.  My friend had been looking for me an one day as she was driving up the Rahu valley behind Paeora she found it.  I decided to take a look and fell in love with the rickerty dewelling which you could not see for vines and undergrowth.  There were holes in the walls and the floor in the third bedroom had been removed for access to water and the room lined silver for warmth.  To add to the value we had a full scale 'pot' growing factory to dismantle.

Any way for three years we poured love, sweat and tears into this little love nest until it is shiny and perfect.  Well almost.

We have had happy times there, we have greived there when my mother died, friend have borrowed it to confront wayward children there and I have gathered strength there when my job got oh so difficult at times.

I also was able to indulge myself in learning to paint and though this made a new and very valuable group of friends. The Valley became a rich source of new if not excenteric friends who got together each Sunday night for a meal and to share their weeks trials and tribulations.

So for old times sake I cooked for the group and it was such fun,  the warmth and happiness shone through as though we had not been apart for two years.  There had been weddings, new partners, deaths and births in the valley.  There had been storms and doughts and almost pestulance and plague.  But things were just the same.

Due to the hurried naure of the meal I resorted to a 'super market meal' and it was grand. Pre cooked chicken casserole followed by pav with thickened cream and Delmains passion fruit sauce.

On returning home and there was a  visit of the grand children to see the new lambs and collect the eggs and an early Sunday dinner of fish cakes, mushy peas and tamarillo chutney followed by home-made ice cream with the last of the passion-fruit sauce.

The next day  there was the lunch for the husbands accounting group.  Lamb , barley and vegetable soup and may be some beer bread made early before going to work. Lemon cake was made even though I was tired.  I made the lemon cake that was featured in my daughters article which featured in the Sunday Star Times yesterday.  I am such a proud mum.

Lamb , barley and vegetable soup

tamarillo chutney

fish cakes

mushy peas

chicken casserole

lemon cake

8 August 2011

The garden is beginning to change and we have been moving plants around, the peas are up and the broad beans are beginning to climb through the new intriguing support system I am trying out.  I am using plastic netting which I put over the bed between four stakes when I sowed the broad bean seeds and as they grow they found their way through.  There are three further levels and this is now supporting them as they grow strong and true, amazing.

The chickens are laying really well and now we have the problem of using them and preserving them in a form that will last.  Mayonnaise and now ice cream.  Mashed eggs for the sandwiches during the week. And the usual lemon and manderine honey.

I am trying to make things stretch a little further use more economical ideas.  The use of the chicken carcasses that are now available at the super market can feed us for three days. They are a miracle to the budgeter. I boil them for an hour with a little salt and then pick of the enormous amount of flesh that is left. Chicken and pasta with the few tomatoes that are left in the garden. Chicken mixed with the first of the leeks, finely chopped with parsley, sage, thyme mint and folded through with a little thick white sauce and sandwiched between pancakes that are always in the freezer.  Topped with a little more white sauce and some grated cheese. Finally I puree the last third with the vegetables used in the boiling process and served with spinach and rice dumplings. 

Cauliflowers are white and perfect in the garden at the moment with their big green leaves folded  over their knobbly forms, that is if I can beat the slugs to them.  Cauliflower baked in the oven with capers and olive oil and flaky salt. Cauliflower in a cheesy sauce baked until the cheese speckles with beautiful brown spots, perfect with a salad and some crusty bread. Curried cauliflower soup with green peppers and specked with red chilli.

I have also taken to buying chicken nibbles and keeping them free flow in the freezer.  They are perfect baked slowly in my wonderful barbeque sauce.

As I am writing this it is slowly dawning on me that I am cooking for two.  I have always cooked for a family, the family has slowly become smaller.  It is the reverse of the frog in hot water and slowly the water of family life and being a mother is becoming a distant memory and the coming of the old and lonely time  is becoming more real. 

Working in an environment where most of the staff and the clients are young gives one a false sense of aging.  One thinks one is the same as the others and your just not.  You forget you have wrinkles and you don’t look in the mirror very often, and then suddenly you catch a glimpse of your unrecognisable self in the mirror, shock horror, you’re an old lady and emotionally alone.  You may live with someone, you may have a family but as you age you become more emotionally alone.  Your thoughts become more complex, your routines more ridged, your ability to adapt to change becomes more difficult.  Small things seem more important and moments more monumental. It surprises me just how supersensitive I am becoming to my environment, to my moods and to those around me. Hyper vigilant you might call it.

The other thing that is becoming more difficult for me is understanding why people have to die.  They die and leave underlying need for connection and a more intense fear of rejection.  Why, why, why do things have to change, I hate it.

The one thing that is constant is how my perpetual spinach keeps growing.  I have now discounted silver beet in any form.  With perpetual spinach you don’t get the terrible funny fuzzy taste. I have added finely chopped spinach to the lasted lasagne that I am trying today which I have mixed it through cottage cheese with grainy mustard.

Saturday is the day when Robyn and her husband come to help and they always have their lunch in the fish’n’chip shop in Silverdale but there always has to be morning tea.  This week it was scones and apricot jam.

We moved the asparagus into its permanent bed.  It is hard waiting for the two years to be up and then you can pick the think juice stems.  Last year the ferns were such a nuisance as they fell all over the path until they turned yellow and could be cut back.  I did tie them p but they looked tight and constrained and not as they should be. I am going to try and get purple asparagus to add to the mix. There is something magical about the way that the deep purple spears turn a deep green when they are cooked.

Ice cream

Chicken and pasta

Chicken in pancakes

Chicken soup with spinach dumplings

Curried cauliflower soup

Cauliflower cheese

Baked cauliflower

Barbeque sauce

New Lasagne

Scones

Dried apricot jam

Email to myself 28 July 2011

I cook when I am stressed.  The process seems to clear my head and if I choose a complex technique I can lose myself in the process and eat the result.

Yesterday I used up some of the lamb shanks that have been sitting in the freezer with a great result and two excellent meals. As a result I had to dust off the pasta machine which is always a pleasure.

We are about to start laming again and in six months time there will be little woolly creatures to go into the freezer again and it is always better to use up the old before starting the new.  I try not to equate these appealing little things to the slow roasted lamb shoulder with beans and tomatoes that we ate with some friends for lunch last week.

 I was a vegetarian for many years but now I seem to have recovered and I tell myself that we are breeding the lambs for just this purpose.

The joys of living in the country bring some unexpected pleasures.  Yesterday I had lunch out of the garden.  A couple of tomatoes and a handful of peas from the green house, a chopped potato left from the end of the season boiled with the first of this seasons leeks and some of the new perpetual spinach which is growing like topsy in spite of the weather.

I get so much pleasure from the garden and feel such a failure when a crop flops.  I have not mastered carrots yet but I intend to try harder this spring.  My peas and broad beans are doing well and beginning to cling hopefully to the trellis that has been set for them.  The asparagus has been transplanted into its new permanent bed and I have added sand and watered with sea weed that has been soaking for the past six months.  Asparagus was once a sea vegetable and a relation to samphire which you find growing along the beach and marshy areas in deserted areas.  I once picked it in one of the estuaries in the Coromandal, boiled it lightly and served it with the scallops that one of the group had dived for just hours before, accompanied by hollandaise sauce.

I love scallops and so many people cook them badly or rather overcook them.  I remember becoming very bossy on the boat and insisting that I cooked them on a very hot pan for just 20 seconds on each side.  The cabin filled up with smoke and every on coughed and spluttered but agreed that they were the best scallops that they had ever eaten. So sweet so soft and almost raw in the middle.

Last year I had a wonderful crop of runner beans and I blanched and froze them for the winter and we are now eating them with quickly boiled from frozen with almonds browned in butter.

The lamb shanks that I cooked yesterday and  that we ate last night with pumpkin had has been waiting in storage for we long winter ahead.  The left over shanks were put in the fridge over night and the solidified fat removed and the meat taken from its bones.  The flesh is silky and breaks into fat chunks to be folded through fresh pasta with chilli and parsley for tonight’s dinner.

Green tomatoes are deliciously sweet, sharp and crunchy – they act as a refreshing foil against the lamb. Ask your butcher to butterfly the lamb for you. 1 medium leg of  lamb
60ml extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 green tomatoes
30ml/1oz olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
freshly ground black pepper

For the chilli oil

2 long red chillies
80mls extra virgin olive oil
a pinch of salt

Place the lamb in a bowl and pour over the olive oil. Massage the meat gently with your hands. Season and set aside, while you get the barbecue ready.

Slice the chilies in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Slice into long, thin strips and then finely across so that you have small neat dice. Place in a bowl and add a pinch of salt. Pour over the olive oil.

Once your barbecue is hot, lay the lamb on top. Cook for 10 minutes on one side and then for a further 10 to 12 minutes on the other. To serve, slice the tomatoes into pinwheels. Slice the lamb, layering the  tomatoes and lamb alternately. Spoon over the chilli oil and serve.

Lamb shanks

Fresh pasta

1 ½ cups of high grade or 00 flour

2 egg yolks

1 tablespoon olive oil

Water to the feel

½ teaspoon salt

Throw it all into the food process or and mix until it forms a clump. Nead a little and devide up into managable chunks which will go through the pasta maker which you have firmly clamped to the bench.  (I have lost my clamps so the husband has to hold it to the bench until I have finished).

Green bean with almonds browned in butter.

Shoulder of lamb with white beans

Email to myself  27 July 2011

We had friends for dinner last week at a wim. It is always a form of stress for me when it is short notice.  I try to act as though it is easy, fast and efficient but preparation is essential.

I made Jo Seagars beer bread which we had with smoked salmon and the dip we all used to make in the sixties using Nestles tinned cream and a packet of onions soup.  I mixed some lemon juice and horseradish into it and with the soft fresh bread it was delicious.  Filling but delicious. Sprnkly some finely chopped chives over the salmon to take away the raw pink nakedness of the salmon

I am glad that I was filling because the leg of lamb was very small.  The lambs we killed this year didn’t do well and really had not fat on them and as we all know fat equally flavour. Because it was a last minute decision the lamb was frozen so I wrapped it in foil with two sliced onions, cloves of garlic, a little rosemary and roasted it very slowly for 6 hours.  It fell apart but it was family hold back.

I always keep plastic bags of stale cut up brioche in the freezer or emergencies such as this and it is very easy to whip up a bread and butter or Queen pudding.  The husband always insists on lots of raisins and I added a good slosh of rum to the egg and sugar mixture.  Delicious.

The husband has been in wellington and I relish the thought of some time alone eating leek and pototo soup with a poached egg in it or perhaps brown nutty toast with bacon and tomato on it.  I have been making mayonnaise with the last of the summer herbs before the frosts get them. I love it loaded with dill for fish or just on toast with avocardo.

Inevitably he rings from wellington to say that the case has settled and is coming home, cant bear to spend the night away from me.  He arrives home starving and wanting dinner at 9.30.  I have come home and because it is just me had an early bath and gotten into the ‘jarmies’. So it is a quick rattle around the ridge to find some minced chicken which I had managed to buy at the super market on special, it had been destined for the freezer, so it was quick Pad Thai. It is not possible to make a small pad Thai so we have had to eat it for two nights and I  will freeze what is left.

We have ‘those’ welcomes for new staff at work, it seems to be every Monday at the moment, and it we are not welcoming someone then someone is having a baby or leaving. Leaving and a baby require the signing of a very large cared and a donation for some terrible gift that I know they won’t treasure forever. 

 When I retired from work last time the person who was in charge of buying my present has the presence to ask me what I would like.  We settled on a rose which now climbs up the side of the warm cottage wall and flowers all though the summer and gives me warm thoughts of the wonderful team that I worked with at Grey Lynn.

Each morning tea requires a ‘plate’. Thought is reqired as to what on a Sunday night.  This week I found a recipe on the back of the grated mozzarella cheese packet for cheese and kumera fritters. So I made little ones to take for the morning tea and some chilli sauce.  They were quite nice but probably a waste of cheese. i Also added a teaspon of grain mustard to give the mixture a little more strength.

Sunday evening we went to the step daughters for dinner and I took the pudding.  Apple crumble.  I have found the best topping that children like just plain and crusty over pulpy hot apple with custard, ice cream and cream.  All three are preferable really, actually compulsory, to hell with the heart; either indulge of don’t have any of it.  It is the mixture of hot and cold on the palate gives that eye closing pleasure which certain food combinations occasionally give one.

I am yet to find the right kind of apple two cook.  Stewed apple used to be one of the main stays in my childhood food memories.  My father had had to have his teeth removed at a very early age as a result of gum a disease which was very common in NZ just before the second World War.  Thus his false teeth hurt him so most of the things my mother or the cook made seemed to centre around mince or stewed apple. Or some  other kind of very soft over cooked stew.  One of the favourites was pineapple and tomato casserole.  It really was delicious and I have resurrected if for a change. This mixture does very well in the crock pot and forms a think brown gravy and the pineapple seems to have some kind of tenderising effect on the meat. 

‘Childhood food memories’ play a huge part in our adult food habits.  The husband was bought up in a Jewish household with a grandmother who had an ample bosom and extraordinary  cooking skills. He talks lovingly of her chicken soup with homemade noodles and her gefilta fish balls. His sister makes lemon honey and fudge that she brings when she visits, things she learnt to make as a child.

Bread

Leg of lamb

Bread and Butter pudding

Leek and potato soup

Mayonnaise

Chicken pad thai

Cheese and kumara fritters.

Miranda's fudge