Plenty of Veges with Yotam Ottolenghi

I decided several months ago that I don't really cook vegetables well. I do eat plenty of vegetables, but because our veges are sooooo gggggoooooddddd here in NZ, I haven't found the need to cook with them much. I tend to steam them a bit, just to bring out their natural flavour, and that's about it. An abundance of flavour and freshness has meant that I haven't developed a vege-skill. Is it the same for you?

So, I decided to invest some time in learning about vegetable cooking. This is, of course, a lifetime project, but I decided to start with one of the best: Yotam Ottolenghi. Mr Ottolenghi is the Guardian's Weekend vegetarian columnist and a London restauranteur and chef. He's not a vegetarian, mind, but he does do a well-regarded line in vegetables in that fine city. It seems that Mr Ottolenghi has more heritage than Stonehenge – Israeli, Jewish, Turkish, Italian personally, plus an Arab boyfriend/cooking partner (I think that's right). And he draws liberally from them all – plenty of aunts and others are referenced.

So, I bought his book “Plenty” – which includes plenty of his columns from the Guardian and some additions. It's a very pretty book and the cover is padded (ooo, ahhh). 

 White is clearly a bit of a silly colour for a book to leave lying around my kitchen, but I'll cope.

A friend already had the book and when I told him I had bought it, he simply said “have fun chopping”. It's true that there's lots of slicing, chopping, crushing and dicing to be done, but I'm up for that! Bring it.

Pav and I spent a week on Waiheke to start our summer holiday, so we took the book along to be our eating guide. We had previously made the Black pepper tofu – which was very very (very) peppery, as warned.  But this time we went further.

You may have heard of my aubergine complex: I love them, but find them difficult to cook (partly, I think because I fear the amount of oil they can soak up). Mr Ottolenghi's Aubergines with buttermilk sauce were a delight. They turned out just like the picture (which is always exciting on the first go) and were delicious – full of the earthy richness of aubergine and the slightly tart tang of buttermilk and yoghurt, plus sweet/sour of pomegranate. 

Pomegranates are around at the moment so get some and make this.

I'm not using his words here, so any trouble is my fault:

Aubergines with Buttermilk Sauce, and Pomegranate
Turn the oven to 200C. Line a baking tray with baking paper or tin foil.

Halve as many aubergine as you have people from tip to toe – then slash parallel lines in the flesh in two directions to make diamond shapes. Don't cut the skin. Brush each half with about 20mL of olive oil. Yes, that seems like a lot, but it worked wonderfully. Lay them in the baking tray, flesh side up and sprinkle with 1.5 to 3 teaspoons of lemon thyme leaves (they don't sell those on Waiheke, so we used ordinary thyme) – season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 35-40 mins until the flesh is soft and brown and looks like it wants to be eaten.

Meantime, make the sauce (this is the part Pav did for us).  This makes enough for 3 aubergine:

Whisk together:

• 140mL buttermilk
• 100g Greek yoghurt
• 1.5 T olive oil
• 1 small garlic clove, crushed
• pinch of salt

Now, for us the raw garlic was a bit full on. If you're into that sort of thing, cool, but otherwise you could try to use garlic infused olive oil, or you could roast the garlic with the aubergines and squeeze it into the sauce.

Serve the aubergines with

• the sauce,
• sprinkles of dukkah (Mr Ottolenghi instructs us to use za'atar, which is much the same),

•  the seeds of a pomegranate – one fruit for every 2-3 people. To get the seeds out, halve the fruit around its equator; place the cut side on your hand over a bowl and then bash the round side of the fruit with a wooden spoon or equivalent to release the seeds into your hand and the bowl – start bashing gently and gradually increase as required and as your confidence improves; pick pith out of the seeds.
• some more thyme sprinkled
• and a drizzle of olive oil.

Absolutely delightful.

We also made two excellent meal-styled salads: Marinated pepper (by which he means capsicum) salad with pecorino and Courgette and cobnut salad (sans cobnuts, almonds instead in our case). Both were delightful ways to use everyday vegetables in a new way.

Plus we made Green pancakes – pancakes full of spinach, spring onions and chillies, served with lime butter (more raw garlic if you don't mind). They were spectacular – spicy enough to be exciting, but without distressing anyone. And the lime butter is a new favourite. 

We will definitely be exploring more of the book and next time I'm in London I'll be sure to check out one of Mr Ottolenghi's several restaurants – assuming I can get in!

These are just a sample of the delights of the book, so you might even consider buying it yourself. If you do, let me know what you make.

Let's keep enjoying the bounties of the vegetable patch as the weather brings so many things to ripeness. And happy new year!

Birthday Thai

Hard as it is to imagine, I get older every year. This year was no exception. By tradition, Pav and I gather our friends together to celebrate our birthdays (his is shortly before mine) in an interesting way. Last year Samoa (sort of), the year before lawn bowls, this year – Thai food and wine matching.

PhuThai Esarn is one of a handful of great Thai places in Wellington. We sorted out a varied set menu for 12 and asked our friend Rebecca Taylor who writes a wine column for the Capital Times (Wine Press) to think up some interesting wine matches for us. And she came up trumps. 

Grilled squid

Our chosen menu included a good mix of spice, heat and milder flavours. Consensus says that the top dishes were the Nam-tok Beef (grilled beef with fresh herbs and lime juice), the Larb Pork (pork salad, with lime juice, chilli and red onion) and the Kang Phed Ped Yang (red duck curry). That last being a sweet, creamy mix with pineapple and duck. The fresh spring rolls are a personal favourite of mine.

Being Thai, it's all a fine balance between spicy (chilli), salty (usually fish sauce), sweet (brown sugar or similar) and sour (lemons, limes, kaffir lime leaves...). Matching wine with that's a fun game as any one of those can fight with some wines. 

 The wines that Rebecca came up with were spot on. She texted tasting notes as she was running a bit late, so we did as instructed and started with the Black Estate Riesling 2010 as an aperitif. This is a Waipara wine from a family owned vineyard and was a smooth start to the night. But it came into its own when the entrees arrived. The fruitiness of the wine was fun to roll around the mouth with the various degrees of flavour and spice in the fish cakes, fresh spring rolls, deep fried goodies and, particularly, the Meuk Yang grilled squid with a chilli dressing. No nasty sauvignon-chilli clash here thank you very much. 

Red duck curry

As mains arrived we slid gently into the Seifried Würzer 2008, another South Island number – Nelson this time. Würzer is a rare German variety with only about 100 hectares planted around the world. Seifried says it has NZ's only Würzer plantings. The founders of Seifried have German heritage, so it's not outrageous that they might give this a go. The grape is a cross between Gewurztraminer and Muller-Thurgau (don't let that last put you off) and goes beautifully with the prickly heat and saltiness of Thai food, as we discovered. The tasting notes say elderflower, peach, apricot and sherbet flavours, which is fair enough. The sweetness which might be annoying in other food matches works wonderfully here. This was everyone's favourite wine of the evening.

The third bottle was a 12,000 Miles Pinot Noir 2010 from Gladstone out in the Wairarapa. I didn't get much of this as I had been enjoying the whites so much (and briefly forgetting my obligations to you, dear reader), but the little I did have was also well matched with the spice. That's interesting because I wouldn't think to order red wine with spicy food usually – I guess it's the spicy food = hot country = cooling white wines linkage in my head. Just goes to show that we should all check our assumptions every so often.

You too should check out PhuThai Esarn in the middle of Cambridge Tce, or its sister PhuThai Lanna on the corner of Vivian and Tory Sts. And take some risks in your wine matches. Hunt down a Würzer!

PhuThai Esarn

35-38 Cambridge Tce

Wellington

04 801 5006

www.phuthaiesarn.co.nz

Rugby, Pizza and Pig's Head

The Oval Ball Global Challenge continues unabated which means that I have now watched more rugby in 2 weeks that in probably the last 20 years (that's about 2 games). And what does rugby mean in terms of food? It means pizza and spicy nuts.

I've been experimenting with coatings for nuts and working with the base of 3 cups of nuts to 1 beaten egg, plus salt and spices. Our favourite so far is:

3 cups of raw mixed nuts

1 egg white (don't use a big one, otherwise this could end up LA omletty)

2 T chopped fresh rosemary

½ t freshly ground salt

½ t ground paprika (you can use more if you want to )

1 t brown sugar (I used dark muscovado, but it's not necessary)

Heat oven to 180 degrees. Beat the egg white until sloppily beaten. Stir remainder of ingredients except nuts in to the egg white. Then stir in the nuts. Spread nuts on a baking tray lined with baking paper and roast for 13 minutes or so until the egg white is dry and the nuts roasted (shake the nuts about half way through). Let them cool before serving so that the egg white and salt can go crispy. Don't worry, they don't taste sweet, the sugar just adds to the crunch and helps carry the spice.

Other combos include salt, finely grated lemon zest and chilli. And a Moroccan-inspired mix of salt, nutmeg, chilli, cumin and ground coriander seeds. Try your own and let me know if you hit on a good combo of your own.

Our pizza this week was ricotta spread on the base, proscuitto, canned artichokes, Kapiti's fresh mozzarella and basil (added after the pizza is cooked). I used Annabel Langbein's pizza base recipe from Smart Food for Busy People (an old favourite, with some great early 90s period crockery!). The pizza came out better off than the pizza 'stone' (which was actually an untreated tile that we bought for this very purpose).  Clearly it didn't like that 270 degrees of the oven this time. Coward!

Ex-pizza stone in 3 pieces!

New pizza stone ahoy!

And a couple of weeks ago, I made a pilgrimage to West Auckland to check out The Tasting Shed which an old TV colleague has opened with her husband in an old cider shed on the grounds of Cooper's Creek vineyard. It's a quicker than you imagine 20 minute drive down the spanking new extension to SH16. No more dog leg, just straight through to Kumeu.

You should take the road too and check out the great venue, food and wine on offer from Jo and Ganesh Raj.

The food options are on blackboards around the room and (as the name would suggest) are designed to be shared. Each that we had was a plate of well thought out and creative cooking. The rolled pig's head which was served with kohlrabi remoulade was a firm suggestion from Jo and she was spot on. That and the filo 'cigar' filled with duck confit served with orange salad and red cabbage were highlights of the savory selections. One small criticism: the fish had one too many flavours on it, but that's a small criticism of an otherwise excellent spread.

Our wine match (suggested by Jo, and again spot on) was the Coopers Creek Single Vinyard Arneis 2010 from Gisborne. Dessert was matched with Alvear Pedro Ximenez (that's the grape variety) 2008 from Montilla Moriles (in the Andalucia area of Spain). That's sherry country, but this wasn't a sherry but of a smokey, raisiny, caramely dessert wine. It was very easy to drink with both the Churros con Chocolate and the Brioche French Toast with honey and fig ice cream.

French Toast with Ice Cream and Honey

You should make the trip, either from Auckland, or if you're from further afield, next time you're in the 09. Get out of the city and try The Tasting Shed. Easier to get to than Parnell and way easier to park in than Ponsonby, and chances are the owner will serve you so you know it will be friendly.

Ceiling Lamps at The Tasting Shed

Lasting impressions:

food: surprising and delighting and to share

service: we were spoiled because we know the owner, but I reckon you'll be to

drive out: no hassle at all and parking's a dream

time to go: we were there at night, but it looks like it would be a great sunny day or summer's evening trip (they have an 'dog box' for private functions, which looks like a goodie for a loud laugh without disturbing your dinner neighbours)

also: there's a courtesy van, so you can be delivered home after imbibing
décor: upgrade to an old cider shed and it's sympathetic with a few sweet touches (lovely lamps on the ceiling and apple box shelving)

The Tasting Shed

609 State Highway 16

Kumeu

09 412 6454

www.thetastingshed.co.nz

Chocolate Festival Round Up

I went choco-mad at the inaugural NZ Chocolate Festival last weekend.  Here are some of my personal highlights.

Super chocolate

A couple of the chocolate companies are now making what they say is chocolate that's even better for your then we all think chocolate is already. Schoc's offering is called Active and they tell me it's cold pressed and made in a vacuum to make sure that it retains as many of the flavonoids (a type of anti-oxidant) as possible. They say that you only need two squares a day to get your daily suggested anti-oxidant dosage. No explanation of what happens if you don't stop at 2 pieces. Schoc also suggest you eat it before exercise to increase the benefits of exercise. Gets the blood pumping apparently. They make it in both dark and milk and, surprisingly for me, I think the milk was better. To me the dark had an aftertaste I didn't like.

Bull Rush do a couple too called Fix72 and Fix Cacao Nib. They reckon theirs lower stress and have aphrodisiac properties. Even more reasons to eat chocolate! 

Bohemein

Bohemein has shops in Hataitai and Featherston St and their little, formed, filled chocolates are a delight to explore. Best one was the Balsamic Vinegar and Honey Ganache filled dark morsel of deliciousness. Then there's the wasabi cream. Go on, you know you want to! It was certainly worth gently elbowing the other chocolate lovers aside to try. Slightly makes you want sushi afterwards, which is a bit startling. I have other flavours at home I'm still working my way through.

Damsom Bomb

The Damson Collection had their damson chocolate in attendance. The woman at the stand advised to pop the whole thing in my mouth and break it up. It was a magnificent little bomb of damson, gin and chocolate. Get you hands on one at any cost!

Hot Antidote

With any festival, by a few hours in all I want is an antidote of some sort. For Toast Martinborough, it's beer. At the chocolate festival, turns out it's cheese. The lovely man from www.firedragonchillies.com was there with his chilli chocolate, cheese and sauces. I looooovvvveeeeee chilli chocolate and these were the spiciest I've ever had! Bhuty Dark Chocolate. Available online and at various specialist stores around the country, including the beloved Moore Wilson's. 

 Another antidote to chocolate overload is beer. Andy from Renaissance Brewing was giving tastes of his artisan beers. He's a charming fellow: “I wouldn't hurt you with Porter,” and maintains that taxes and water quality have been the greatest influence on beers styles. Avoiding the first, and coping with the second.

He hosted a chocolate and beer matching session late in the day and it was eye- and tastebud-opening. Andy says that his Craftsman chocolate porter matches gorgonzola; a claim I am prepared to test. As Andy says “try this at home”, just make sure your beer is cool, but not cold. As a general rule, darker chocolate with darker beer. Try the Stonecutter Scotch Ale, made with 9 different malts, with or without chocolate! Wooop.

This festival was described as inaugural, I hope that means there will be more!

Some Like it Hot

It's been a week of chillis.

People know about my chilli obsession.  So much so, that I am often presented with them when there are too many in someone's garden. Suits me fine.  These from my friend's mum!

Chilli 1 - sausage
During a visit to the Harbourside Market beside Te Papa on Sunday, we purchased a piece of chilli sausage from the caravan of Milan Malivuk – branded Little Wolf (a translation of his surname). It's lovely dried spicy pork sausage which can be eaten as is or cooked in meals. So Pav stirred it into a stock, onion, chickpea and canned tomato soup. No need for other flavours as the sausage releases its spices (mainly paprika and garlic I think, but it's a secret of course) to flavour the entire soup. Marvelous, fuss-free eating. These are handmade, preservative-free and worth finding at the market, Moore Wilson's or the Mediterranean Food Warehouse.

Chilli 2 - sorbet
Then, after Pav went on tour, I went back to the Boys of Breaker Bay and made dessert again. This time poached pears and chocolate chilli sorbet (dairy free). The recipe as written doesn't contain chilli, but that's never stopped me.

Poaching pears is simple – peel fairly ripe pears, trim the bottom so the pears will sit up unaided, poach in flavoursome, preferably sweet, liquid (almost anything will do) until tender. You can scoop out the core of the pear from the bottom, but I never do. I'm not that posh.

I poached these beurre bosc pears in sugar and water and a pinch each of cinnamon, ginger (of course!) and chilli powder.

I love dark chocolate and chilli and so should you! Chilli and chocolate are double fun – the double aphrodisiac of the chocolate and the chilli justifies this combination alone. However, I believe that chilli is also an anti-inflammatory, a pain killer and an anti-depressant. Added to what we know about the revitalizing powers of chocolate, what more excuses do you need!?

This is the easiest 'ice' I've ever made. Sugar (1/3 cups brown, 1 and 2/3 cups white), water (4 cups), cocoa (2 cup) and vanilla (1 tablespoon). Melt the sugar in the water over heat, then add the cocoa and simmer for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. It thickens slightly. Add the vanilla and then chill for at least 2 hours. Then churn in your available method – machine or by hand (freeze in flat metal dish for 2 hours, break up firmly with whisk or fork, freeze for 2 hours, break up, repeat a few times). Churning in a machine produces a smoother mixture, but it's not so much better that you shouldn't do the other if you're an ice cream maker-free household. I added the chocolate/chilli nibs as the mix churned. A good half teaspoon ground up, I'd say.  See picture of chocolate/chilli nibs.

I served the pears with the sorbet and some of the left over syrup reduced by fast boiling. The more the sorbet melted, the more the essential oils of the chillis were released. Essentially it got more exciting as the temperature increased. As it should. Tee hee.

Chilli 3 - Larb Plaa
Then, a few days later, my chilli-enthusiast friend and I snuck into Ban Mai Thai at 111 Vivian St for a quick dinner. We only stayed for a main-course-sharing session, so I can't give you a full review, but suffice to say I've been about 4 times over the last few years and these guys never fail to deliver great tasting food for good prices.

This was no exception. We ordered two hot and spicy dishes and the outstanding one was the Larb Plaa, which was fish fillet with chilli, lemongrass, onion, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, lime juice and herbs. It was hot-spicy-hot, but layered with levels of flavour so that there was still something to roll around the tongue. The fish had been shredded and mixed with the other flavours to make the dish like a warm salad. The beef and pepper dish was also tasty, but the fish was the winner on the night.

Hot flavours for a cold mid-winter week. I wonder how I can get chillis into my breakfast next week?