Intellectually curious

I was once described as "intellectually curious" by a man I met at a party. He was a professor and, as I recall, we were discussing New Zealand in the context of international foreign policy. As you do at parties.

'Intellectually curious' is a somewhat ambiguous descriptor but I took it to mean 'inquisitive' rather than 'peculiar'. My latest food experiment may have you wondering whether Mr Professor really meant the later.

I know this blog is supposed to be about weird and wonderful foods I've eaten, but I'm going to bust out today and tell you about some of the weird and wonderful things in my fridge that I'm not going to eat. Well, I could, but I'd probably die as a result.

Early this year I rediscovered an ancient unopened tub of Puhoi berry yoghurt in my fridge door. It was in such advance stages of fermentation that the foil seal had bulged upwards to the point that it cracked the tub's plastic lid. (Intellectually) curious, I decided to leave it there to discover what would happen next.

I'll admit to having been a little apprehensive every time I opened the fridge in case the movement resulted in a Yoghurt Event. But it held off and, nearly a year later, is sitting there waiting for expectantly my next move. More on that soon.

I have another experiment, one that I've been harbouring at the back of the fridge...just for my blog readers, whoever you mysterious people may be. And that's the jumbo formerly green but now blue and green olive experiment.

I bought some tasty jumbo green olives at the French Market in Parnell. I thought olives never went off, so took my time eating them.

To my surprise they started to develop a blue crust. I'm not sure whether the blue is mould or some kind of chemical leachate. Either way, it's scary. In the interest of scientific discovery and intellectual curiousity, I've left them there to see how blue they'll go. Here's how they look after a few (maybe three?) months

So, what now? I'm certainly not about to eat either experiment; I'm not even sure I want to even so much as sniff them.

In the interest of low-brow entertainment, I plan to don a raincoat and get one of the kids to video the moment I open the yoghurt. I think it's probably all fermented out by now and will probably resist the temptation to explode all over me. But you never know.

And here's where this blog gets all interactive. Shall I do it this week? Or shall I wait until exactly a year after its 23 November best before date?

Reader votes will decide.

That's if I have any readers out there. Or am I just talking to myself? Now that would be curious indeed.

I'm in love

Don't tell Don, but I'm in love...with my new gas wok ring, that is.

For the past 12 years I've only had an electric stove top on which to cook, which was totally usesless for stir-frying and wok cooking. But that all changed a few weeks ago and I'm now the proud owner of a majorly grunty Ilve wok ring, a Bosch induction hob and one (soon to be two) Miele ovens...and a huge Visa bill.

All these appliances were bought in anticipation of a major kitchen overhaul later this year / early next.

At lunch time today it was fab to be able to pop upstairs and quickly whip up a decent stir fry. See?

And now for a gratuitous close up. Yum, that monster bit of chilli was great!

Trouble is, it's been so long since I cooked with gas that I don't know how to properly control the flame, as my old, rusting wok now attests:

Does anyone have an opinion as to which is best - a stainless steel or a common garden wok?

Crumbs!

Despite another relapse yesterday, I've been pretty good on the gluten-free front (refer blog 'Gluten-free glue: http://annasfoodsafari.blogspot.com/2010/07/gluten-free-glue.html)

But what is a Mum to do when her 11-year-old proudly bakes his first pizza and really, really, really wants you to have a taste? For the record, it was yum! Anyway, I'm going to be pragmatic and avoid gluten where practicable but not get too worried if I really want to eat something with gluten in it.

A good thing about going gluten-free is that it largely keeps me away from the temptation of the cake tin. Most weeks I bake something yummy for the kids' school lunches and sometimes feel tempted to undertake (quite a bit of) quality control. I work from home, so the cake tin and its goodies is always handy.

A bad thing about going gluten-free is that the cake tin is usually off limits when a snack attack hits. Sometimes fruit just does not do the biz. We've had some quite cold weather over the past week, which bumped up my appetite and got me thinking of caaaake. A lot.

The weather has warmed up and my appetite has abated, but I thought I'd have a go at making a flourless walnut cake with the pre-shelled and diced walnuts that I bought at the Food Show. Here's the recipe:

350 g walnut meal, lightly toasted

5 eggs, separated

200 g caster sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Grease a 24 cm springform tin and line the base with baking paper.

Beat egg yolks until smooth then gradually add in sugar. Beat for about 4 minutes until misture is thick and creamy.

Transfer mixture to a large bowl. fold in walnut meal and vanilla.

In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites until firm peaks form. Fold 1/3 of the egg white mixture into the walnut mixture, then add remaining egg white.

Spread the mixture into the tin and bak for 20 min or until cooked. Cool cake completely in the oven with the door ajar.eheat oven to 180 C. Grease a 24 cm springform pan and line the base with baking paper.

(Recipe courtesy of Uncle Joe's: www unclejoes.co.nz)

For some reason I had the hankering to turn it into a European-style cake by splitting it horizontally and smearing the middle with raspberry jam. The cake was very crumbly so it took quite some doing without destroying it in the process.

Here's how cakey looked after its little operation:

Don't you just love the mis-en-place. More like 'messy place'!

Keeping with the European theme, I made cinnamon icing (something I invented specially for this cake). It's yum: just put a tsp of ground cinnamon with the icing sugar, then add lemon juice. What do you think of the end result? I think it looks really funky. Maybe there's hope yet for a future food styling career.

Okay, maybe not.

Even though the cake is intended for the kid's lunches, we sampled some (accompanied by whipped cream) after lunch. It's nice but extremely crumbly. It would be impossible for the kids to easily eat it at school, so I consigned it to afternoon tea duty and whipped up a batch of date and walnut muffins for the lunch boxes.

Living on the edge

Every month our family dines out together. Rather than Don and I always choosing the venue, we have a democratic approach whereby everyone takes a turn to choose.

The rules are simple: if it's your turn, you can choose anywhere provided that it's a restaurant (as opposed to a 'restaurant' such as McDonalds, Wendys, etc.). Everyone must accept the choice without complaint, and participate in the meal with good grace. This approach works well, given the extreme differences in our individual food preferences.

This month it was Don's turn to choose. He's a plain food person and wanted to go somewhere 'Kiwi'. We decided to put our Entertainment Guide to good use and, after some consideration, Don opted for a Titirangi restaurant called Toby's.

Even though I'm fairly familiar with Titirangi, cycling through it regularly over the summer, I'd never heard of Toby's so I checked it out on www.dineout.co.nz

The reviews were mixed. Very mixed. Scary even. And it transpired that Toby's had been the subject of a recent 'restaurant rescue' makekover yet to screen on telly.

Suddenly Toby's seemed a dodgy choice, despite the Entertainment Guide's lure of a free main course. What to do? Give it a go and potentially have a disgusting meal? Or try somewhere safer?

We decided to live on the edge and give it a go. Yep, that's our idea of living on the edge. Tragic really.

To cut a long story short, the venue was very pleasant and welcoming - a nice neighbourhood restaurant. It was busy and the service was friendly but a bit disorganised. The food was okay but nothing special. See my review if you want to know more: http://www.dineout.co.nz/restaurant.php?rest=223&Restaurant=Tobys_Restaurant

I'd taken the camera so I could regale you with photos of what we ate but I just couldn't bring myself to whip it out and draw attention to our table by flashing away. And therein lies a weird dichotomy; I have no qualms about snapping away in Asian or ethnic places but can't bring myself to do it in Western style restaurants.

What's that all about?

From yuk to yum

It was a weekend of two food experience halves. Things got off to a bad start on Friday evening when I opted to try Fijian Indian takeaways. For years I've eyed up a Fijian Indian place not far from where I live but, for some inexplicable reason, I've never got round to giving it a go.

Now I know I was wise. I don't know whether the guy picked my Kiwi accent on the phone and assumed I wanted totally flavourless food, or whether all Fijian Indian food is like that. I suspect it's the former.

The dhal tasted of split peas, salt and little else. There were a few mustard seeds floating disconsolately on top, but there were not enough to impart any flavour. Usually one would expect to taste curry leaf and chilli in such a dahl, but not in this case. Snore.

Things didn't get any better with the goat curry and bhindi (okra). Both were seasoned with salt and nothing else. The bhindi was finely minced and fried, but not sauced. Anyone who knows okra knows it has mucilaginous properties and the nett effect of this dish was (skip the next bit if you're squeamish) like eating snotty green lumps (see, warned you).

The warmed up goat and bhindi leftovers the next day were no better, despite a pathetic attempt to jazz it up with a dollop of pad Thai sauce.

Fortunately Saturday night's dinner more than made up for Friday's Fijian flop.

I love spicy, tasty food but my husband does not. Rather than cry into my mashed spuds, earlier this year I decided to form a dinner club of likeminded people. 'Fire Eaters' aims to relish the following: authenticity, flavour, variety and expanded culinary horizons.

I identify a restaurant - Cambodian in last night's case - and work with them to develop a reasonably priced set menu. I then email my fellow Fire Eaters and let them know what's on the menu, how much it will cost, and where and when. People love it because it's so easy - all they have to do is pay me beforehand and turn up.

Twenty-one of us enjoyed last night's dinner at Auckland's only Cambodian restaurant - Sopheara. It was a great evening. Cambodian food is a cross between Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese. We had a number of dishes, but I think my favourites were the two pictured below - battered prawns on a bed of red curry and broccoli, sprinkled with peanuts. What's not to like about battered anything, especially battered prawns?

I really liked the curry sauce, which was more like a light peanut sauce.

The beef salad with fresh Asian herbs, salad greens and crushed peanuts was delicious and refreshing, even if the beef was a little chewy.

We rounded of our meal with sticky rice and coconut milk, which was - oddly enough - accompanied by a scoop of French Vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. The sticky rice was topped with a disconcertingly grey sauce but despite its unpromising appearance, it all tasted pretty damn good.

Guar bean report

I took the opportunity on Saturday to bust into my Food Show stash and can report that the guar beans weren't amazing. They tasted okay - beany - but were quite stringy.


As my father put it: "you could get the same effect by leaving any kind of bean too long on the vine".

Oddly enough young Rory, who is a pretty fussy eater, liked them and asked for seconds. This is the same boy who turns his nose up at just about everything I cook.

The disappointing beans were off-set by one of the meal's highlights; manuka smoked eggs.

http://www.ch9.co.nz/node/14052

Raw hen's eggs are cold-smoked for many hours, imparting a delicate smoky flavour. The shells look scary - quite blackened at one end - but don't let that put you off trying them. I served them fried. Rory wouldn't even sniff one, let alone taste it.

The rest of us hoovered them up and fought over the leftovers.

We also ate some delicious beef chorizo sausages that I bought at the foodshow.

Just in case you think that I only ever eat weird things, here's what I made for lunch on Saturday (using more Food Show ingredients, including artichoke hearts and washed down with a passionfruit soda made with the syrup I bought at the show):


The white cubes are fried haloumi cheese (bought at the Rotorua market at Easter and recently rediscovered lurking in the depths of my fridge), plus the salad includes baby cos lettuce, cucumber, tomato and Kalamata olives. All very normal fare. At least in our household.





I held off the urge to eat one of the chocolate brownies until the following day when I became mired in a combination of household chores and trying to complete the never-ending rumpus room Roman blind project (something which has dragged on since last year). I HATE sewing Roman blinds and, as the day progressed, found myself getting increasingly grrrrrrrumpy.

I'm not hugely into chocolate, but sometimes there's nothing like having a good old chocolatey pig-out to make life seem sweet again.

Gluten-free glue

I'm currently experimenting with a gluten-free diet. That is, when I'm not eating gluten-infested food.

I'll spare you the digestive details behind my decision to try going gluten-free, other than to say the issues were sufficiently annoying for me to try taking this step. The reason I suspect gluten as the culprit, rather than something else, is because in recent years I've noticed that I feel unwell if I eat bread more than once a day. For some reason cake binges don't seem to have the same effect (so the problem might not be a gluten intolerance after all).

It's possible to bake some passable cakes using ground nuts instead of wheat flour so I surmised it must also be possible to make a gluten-free steamed pudding. My first attempt one recent cold evening tasted great but looken incredibly insipid and had a dense, very rubbery texture.
"It's just like a dish sponge," hubby and kids pronounced. And I had to agree. Not even copious quantities of custard could hide the awful rubbery truth.

The dish sponge texture was hardly surprising, given I'd made it using smooth ultra-white flours such as tapioca, rice and potato flours. Maybe it just needed some texture from ground almonds? So I gave everyone enough time to recover from the horrors of Round One, then made a chocolate version that included a cup of ground almonds.

It wasn't quite so dish spongy this time round. But it still wasn't great. The left overs sat, studiously ignored, in the fridge until today. Curious as to its sticking power, I tried a few gluten-free steamed pudding experiments.

Experiment one:














Experiment two:

Although I've largely been good at avoiding foods containing gluten, self-denial has never been one of my stronger suites. As a result, I've fallen off the wagon several times over the past few days.

I'm back on it again but I don't hold out much hope for sticking (pardon the pun) to my gluten-free regime the next time I feel like having a steamed pudding for dessert.

Plenty to drool over

I got a bit carried away at the Auckland Food Show today.

http://www.foodshow.co.nz/

I actually bought more; hours after taking this photo I discovered four tubes of vanilla beans in my handbag (paid for, I might add!).

I've never been to the food show before, mainly because I'd always mistakenly assumed it would be hideously crowded and impossible to get to the counters to scoff any samples. It did indeed get crowded, but not in a bad way. And I got to eat plenty of samples.

When I wasn't walking in a zombie-like foodie trance sussing out the hundreds of exhibits, I enjoyed watching other foodies in their own little worlds. Some people seemed more intent on standing around gas-bagging, quaffing lots of wine samples. A few seemed SERIOUS about thoroughly investigating everything.

I even saw one resolutely wheeling a suitcase (no doubt stuffed with foodie finds) after him. Now that's scary.

And then there was the stroller brigade. Despite a couple of close calls, I managed to avoid tripping and sitting on several pushchair bound toddlers along the way.

The food show has a range of really good guest chef presenters and I made a bee-line for Josh Emett, Gordon Ramsay's (Kiwi) right-hand man. The fact Mr E is also handsome had nothing to do with anything of course.

I was surprised to find that the auditorium wasn't full of drooling middle-aged women. In fact there were probably as many men, as women. Not sure what that means.

I had wondered whether Mr E's good looks were something only I'd noticed, a fallacy dispelled when I got chatting to a woman next to me, who immediately commented on how handsome he is. And here's the handsome devil in action:

He cooked two dishes from Ramsay's Melbourne restaurants (we all got recipes):

* Seared yellow fin tuna with daikon, enoki mushrooms and black garlic. This is more of an "impress your friends" dinner party dish. It looked divine!

*Prawn and miso salad. Apparently Josh loves this salad and eats it for lunch all the time. What's good enough for him is good enough for me...once I find time to go out an buy a few of the necessary ingredients (including white miso paste and fresh-frozen soya beans).

So, what did I buy? Apart from the vanilla beans, I bought (clockwise from bottom left in the photo above): beef chorizo sausages, manuka smoked eggs, NZ grown passionfruit syrup, NZ grown chopped walnuts, NZ grown chopped hazlenuts, Jamican meat jerky paste, Kokako organic truffles (not for me, but for one of my clients who's going through a tough time), Kokako gluten free chocolate brownies (all for me - they're goooood), guar beans and four packs of artichoke hearts.

Many of these will provide great inspiration for blogs over the coming days. Perhaps the most unusual thing was the guar beans (a dollar a handful) from the Pacific Islands Trade and Invest stall. Apparently they taste like, well, beans.

I'll cook 'em up tomorrow and tell you all about it.

Fowl most foul

My foray into Mexican food experimentation got off to a foul start.

Just before Easter I added (yet) another item to my food collection; a jar of mole sauce. Auckland is hardly a Mexicana Mecca, so, apart from Tex Mex incarnations, I've eaten very little Mexican food. Keen to broaden my horizons, I checked out one of this city's few Mexican eateries - a small, part-time cafe in Ellerslie:

http://www.mexicanspecialties.co.nz/

The spicy tortilla lunch I had was nice enough, as was my first ever sample of chillied chocolate. Emboldened, I bought a jar of Mole sauce.

Despite its cheerful labelling, the jar of sauce somehow seemed sinister and unappealing once I got it home. The contents had settled to the bottom and were covered by a thick, dark, oily slick.

To add to my general unease, I Googled 'mole sauce recipes' and noted that the real deal had far more ingredients than those listed on my mass produced speciman.

Months passed.

The jar of sauce sat on the bench, glistening expectantly at me.

On Sunday I decided to be brave and try it - but not on the family (see, I have a heart after all). According to the instructions, one part of sauce needed to be mixed with four parts of water then cooked with chicken.

Getting the sauce out of the jar was a challenge because the sludge layer was surprisingly hard. I chisled out several chunks, noting with a sinking heart that I really didn't like the way it smelled. A small taste test did nothing to give me hope. It was chilli hot and tasted of burnt chocolate with an unpleasant savoury note.

But I boxed on and mixed it with some chicken drumsticks, then put it in the oven to bake. The dish looked absolutely disgusting, as only rounded shapes in thick, dark brown sauce can.

With growing unease, I took another sample after it had baked a while and decided I simply wouldn't be able to eat it. So I took the chicken out of the sauce, scraped it down, and put it back along with a can of diced tomatoes and some smoked Spanish paprika. A faint mole-ish note lingered in the background, but not enough to make me retch.

Hardly an exotic lunch in the end, but at least it was edible. Here's what the end result looked like:

As you can see, food styling isn't my forte.

There - far more appealing. That's until I tell you that the backs of the lemon leaves were covered in scale insects.

Cerebral post script

My goat brain masala fixation continues to haunt me:

http://annasfoodsafari.blogspot.com/2010/07/not-now-not-ever.html

On the way home from dinner out last night, Don and I bought a bottle of milk from the Indian superette where I'd spotted the goat brain masala powder.

Compelled to share the fear with my beloved, I dragged him down the masala aisle so he could appreciate its true horror for himself.

It was all gone!

I couldn't believe my eyes and spent several minutes scanning the shelves in disbelief. Don't tell me that people actually buy this stuff! And eat it, along with its intended accompaniment? And that enough people buy it for it to sell out, bypassing all of the other weird and wonderful masala powders on offer?

Maybe I imaginged it in the first place?

Or maybe the missing masala nasties are stalking the streets looking for stray goat brains to invade?

Animal farm lunch

It's just dawned on me that today's lunch included food from five different species: goat, sheep, cow, buffalo and Lily's fermented tofu creature. I could have better aligned lunch with my Animal Farm metaphor by including some pork salami, but I'm full and I'm sure you'll appreciate the pun anyway.

Lily's creature and the corned beef pastrami aside, the star ingredients in my lunch were sourced from Sabato, a local store that sources foods primarily from Italy, Spain and France.

http://www.sabato.co.nz/

I popped in yesterday with my son Kieran to buy a couple of things and, as usual, got completely carried away and came out over $200 poorer. And it's all this blog's fault. A lot of my recent new foods have been of an Asian persuasion, so I decided it was time to get Continental.

In between futile attempts to prevent Kieran from hoovering up all of the (many) free food samples on offer, I managed to suss out some previously untried cheeses: Garrotxa (a Spanish goat milk hard cheese) and Bleu des Basques (a French sheep milk semi-soft blue cheese). Both taste delicious.

I'm not sure why, but I've got a real thing about sheep milk cheeses and regularly seek them out. Maybe it's something to do with living in the land of sheep?

While waiting for the frommagier to slice some samples I espied a tub of New Zealand produced buffalo yoghurt in a nearby chiller. Buffalo yoghurt is really, really white - far more so than cow's milk yoghurt, which has a slightly yellow hue. It tastes similar though.

I ate the yoghurt sweetened with some maple syrup - a newfound discovery borne out of the desire to rid my pantry of a bottle that had a teeny bit of syrup left in the bottom. What a great discovery: the toffee-ish taste of the maple syrup went really well with the creamy buffalo yoghurt. Must eat that one again sometime soon.

Today's lunch also included a couple of crackers spread with Lily's tofu creature. It still has BO but has a nice, creamy taste and texture. I'm becoming quite fond of it really.

Fear factor food

After she'd offloaded the chokos yesterday, Lily proffered another gift: home-made fermented tofu.

She prefaced the offering with a comment that many Chinese people find it a bit much (!) but she brought me some because she knows I like to try new things. Gingerly, I lifted the lid off and took a sniff: several scatological descriptors came to mind.

Fermented tofu is made by dicing plain tofu and leaving it to fester at room temperature for several weeks. Once it has grown legs, then refrigerate it and leave it to mature. Apparently it gets better with keeping.

I have eaten commercial fermented bean curd on many occasions, but it's preserved in a chillied brine and has quite a different appearance and aroma to Lily's version.

Lily's fermented tofu

Commercial fermented tofu in chilli brine

I had a wee taste yesterday and it was strong, but edible. Today I slathered a whole lot on a cracker and can report that its taste (and smell) has rounded out a lot over night. It's studded with chilli, so is hot, but is nowhere near as salty as the commercial variety. To my surprise, it had a lovely creamy texture.

Nice. But I think I'd better go and brush my teeth now.

An improbable lunch

I'll bet I'm the only person in New Zealand (and possibly the world) who ate shark and choko surprise for lunch today.

Once a week I employ the cleaning services of a wonderful Chinese woman, Lily. Like me, she loves food. From time to time she brings me yummy Chinese delicacies, such as a soupy fermented rice dessert (deliciously refreshing in summer). I respond in kind with Kiwi delicacies, such as mince. Lucky Lily.

She has a prolific choko vine and, like most choko vine owners, takes any opportunity to offload its multitudinous offspring onto unsuspecting victims. Be warned, accepting the offer of "some chokos" is likely to result in a fridge-filling gift along these lines:

















Chokos are, Lily informs me, wonderful when cooked Sichuan style with chicken. Here's her recipe (I'd imagine these quantities are sufficient for two people):


Lily's Sichuan style chicken and choko


1 dsp Sichuan peppercorns

1 tbsp Sichuan chilli broad bean paste

Chicken wings

Peeled, diced choko

Salt, to taste.


Heat oil. I'm not sure how much - maybe half a cup?

Add Sichuan peppercorns and fry a little. Then add bean paste and fry 1-2 minutes, until the oil is red.


Add chicken wings and stir-fry about 20 minutes, or until nearly done. Add a little water if it's drying out too much.

Add diced choko and cook until ready. Add salt to taste.

I got her to write the name of the broadbean paste in Chinese, which was a good idea because I'd never have found it in my local Chinese supermarket otherwise. Here's what to look for (the brand is Pixian):






















I couldn't face the thought of anything sandwichy or ricey for lunch today, so decided to give Lily's recipe a go. Not wanting to spend 20 minutes frying chicken wings, I bought a fillet of lemon fish (aka Shark) and used that instead (adding it after the choko).

I wasn't entirely sure how much of the hot, salty broadbean paste to use, so erred on the side of caution. Note to self: next time amp it up with more Sichuan peppercorns and broadbean paste.

I also added some soaked rice vermacelli 'cause I like my carbs! The resulting lunch was lovely and I'll cook it again.

A weird and wonderful week

On Friday evening it dawned on me that my week-long 'never before eaten' challenge was over.

What a weird and wonderful week it has been. My mother thought my challenge was a really naff idea and couldn't figure out why I'd want to do such a "stupid thing". Call me contrary if you will, but I've loved (almost) every moment of it.

The week's highlights included:

• The challenge itself. I love new experiences and I love food. What more can I say.
• Sichuan food, even if we did potentially dice with death (or at least a dose of food poisoning) in the process.
• Being brave enough to eat chickens' paws, after decades of avoiding them. They're actually okay, if one avoids thinking about chicken leg skin. I'll eat them again.
• Watching the cat flee from the turkey spam (sorry Phoebe). See, I told you it was awful. And yes, I did give her something else for dinner that night.

Low points included:

• The flaccid, disappointing Indian lunch on the final day. I felt queasy all afternoon.
• My turkey spam, canned carrot, energy drink and chocolate breakfast cereal lunch. Ditto.
• Recurring thoughts of goat brain curry masala.

Perhaps the best outcome is that I've discovered that I enjoy blogging. I'll continue trying new food experiences, albeit less regularly than daily, so keep tuning in for the latest in Anna's Food Safari!

The dreaded droop

Back on track with the food challenge, Kieran and I lunched at one of the many Indian restaurants in our neighbourhood. I've eaten at this place many times over the years and had been meaning to try one of their specialties, channa bhatura - chick pea curry with crispy, puffed fried bread.

Here's how it should have looked:

Here's the sad, droopy one I received:

Unsurprisingly, it had none of the crispy novelty value of a well-made example. The channa (chickpea) curry was okay, but nowhere near as good as I've had there in the past.

Rating = 4.5

Kieran had butter paneer, accompanied by a slightly puffier bhatura. The paneer sauce was disappointing - it tasted like Watties Tomato Soup. Not that I dislike Watties Tomato Soup, it's just that it has no place in an authentic Indian meal.

Rating = 5

Things didn't get any better when we tried a selection of Indian sweets: Karachi halwa (the orange stuff), batushai and gujiya. All three were very sweet, as expected, but also extremely bland, tasting of little more than slightly stale milk powder. Yuk.

Rating = 3.5

The restaurant used to be very good but I've noticed they've started cutting corners and I have been disappointed with the food I've had there lately. I think it's time to move on to somewhere else.

Desperate measures

I'd been going great guns with this challenge, until today. The challenge has been fun, but it is time consuming. First one has to decide which food to try, then it needs to be sourced (unless it's in one of my food collection piles). And it may even need to be prepared. Then photographed and consumed.

Work and other commitments got in the way and, before I knew it, it was 9.30 pm and I hadn't tried anything new for the day.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I rummaged through the fridge and pantries, but couldn't find anything I hadn't tried, or that didn't require any preparation, until I discovered a six-year-old box of herbal tea bags pushed to the back of a shelf.

I don't like herbal tea. I like coffee. If I'm feeling righteous, I sometimes drink green tea, and may even drink English breakfast tea at a push.

The only reason I have herbal tea is for visitors. Given that only about five of the 10 "Lipton Herbal Infusions caffeine free cranberry, raspberry and strawberry flavoured" tea bags (ugh) had been consumed during the past six years, it looks like I've had few herbal tea fans over. Either that or they'd taken a look at what was on offer and opted for water.

There was nothing else on offer, so an ancient herbal tea it would be for me. Sigh.

The signs weren't good, the packaging had stuck to the tea bag and, once I finally peeled most of it off, I noticed the tea bag's contents were clumped together. Thankful for small mercies, I reminded myself that at least it was only a herbal horror and unlikely to involve any animal parts.

The tea looked lovely - like raspberry cordial - and smelled ok. It tasted foul. No taste really, just and ancient cardboardy flavour. Two sips later, it was down the drain.

A nutter...and proud of it

Back in the 'eighties a friend told me about a (Kiwi) flatmate who cooked and ate chickens' feet. At the time New Zealand's population had very few Chinese and the concept of eating chickens' feet was virtually unknown.

I recall being utterly horrified and commenting that only a nutter would eat something so repulsive.

Well, never say "never" (unless it involves eating brains). I've had many an opportunity to eat chickens' feet over the years but have never been tempted. Until now. What has this food challenge done to me?

Last night my brothers Brody and John, and my adventurous 11-year-old son Kieran, headed to a Sichuan Chinese restaurant to see what culinary challenges we could confront. When I say "we", I exclude John, a most unadventurous eater. He stuck to spring rolls.

The menu offered plenty of wonderful potential to try new things. We had to rule out a few though, such as sea cucumbers (advance notice required, otherwise I would have eaten one - honest!), and a variety of pork lung/intestine/squidgy bit dishes (I don't like pork).

To get the ball rolling, I bought a bottle of Tsingtao beer. I've never before tried Chinese beer and found Tsingtao to be very light (in all senses, including 2% alcohol) and not very bubbly.

Rating = 5

Now for The Business. I honed straight in on "hot and sour chicken paws". Chicken PAWS? How could I resist? (Quite easily, really.) But I didn't. The hot and sour chicken paws were actually cold, hot and sour. i.e. refrigerator cold, accompanied by salty vegetable chunks, some pickled chillis and a light vinegary sauce.

Thank God they'd trimmed the claws off and cut the paws into bits so you could almost pretend not to notice what they really were. Could I eat one?

Yep. They were okay, quite bony with gelatinous skin. Chickenish tasting. I wasn't nearly as freaked out as I though I'd be - probably thanks to having consumed turkey spam the day before. Not much could be worse than that. I think the chicken paws would have been nicer if they were heated. Brody reckoned they should have been accompanied by a dipping sauce.

Rating = 6

Next up was a classic Sichuan dish, Chongquing fried chicken. Sichuan food uses lots of chilli peppers and sichuan pepper, which has mouth numbing quality and this dish had loads of both.

Nestled amongst vast quantities of fried dried red chillis were tasty nuggets of slightly lemony tasting fried chicken, accompanied by deep fried peanuts. Yum, yum, yum.

The dish was very spicy hot from the sichuan peppercorns, which made my mouth and lips go quite numb and tingly. Impressive!

Rating = 8

I didn't eat any of the chillis because I assumed they were there to lend flavour, rather than to be eaten per se. Imagine the next day's after burn if one did consume them all. We reckon there must've been the equivalent of about 100 chillis in the dish! Here's what was left after we mined out all of the chicken:

One of the other dishes we ordered, scallop and egg custard, was a nice foil to the chicken. This savoury steamed custard, studded with dried (?) scallop and scented with sesame oil came in a cute bamboo serving dish. It was lovely, albeit a bit salty.

Rating = 8

We finished the meal with a light, soupy fermented rice dessert. I thought I was ordering something previously untried but when it arrived, I realised that my Chinese cleaner has given me a similar type of dish in the past. Her (home made) version is, I think, nicer than the one we had at the restaurant. The restaurant one was refreshing, but too sweet. It should have had more of a sour tang.

We all enjoyed our meal until Brody insisted upon getting the restaurant owner to reveal the restaurant's food hygiene rating (which suspiciously had a plastic bag taped over it). It was a 'D' (i.e. the restaurant is one step off being closed down because of poor food hygiene standards).

Eeek. Wish us luck.

Animal experimentation

Here's what happened when I offered Phoebe cat a Turkey Spam dinner:

Upping the ante

So far this challenge has been a pretty easy ride so I decided to up the ante and try a truly scary food group: previously untasted Kiwi food.

Given that I'm a highly adventurous eater, and a born and bred Kiwi, there's a damn good reason why I haven't got round to trying certain foods over the past 46 years.

Where better to get the ball rolling than Foodtown's canned meat aisle?

$16 later I was the somewhat trepidatious owner of a tin of turkey spam, a tin of cooked carrots, an energy drink and a box of "Big Bugs 'n Mud - with chocolatey crunchy cluster crackle" (love the alliteration) breakfast cereal.

Lunch wasn't going to be good.

My mate Janice called by just before noon and innocently accepted the offer of a bite to eat. She quickly opted for toast when I told her what was on the menu.

The thought of turkey spam really scared me. Which bits of the turkey would it contain? Did those bits contain feet? Or brains? Or other unmentionables?

As for the carrots, I don't like cooked carrots so canned ones held no great promise. Trouble was, they were the only available canned vege that I'd never previously eaten...until now.

I've never seen the point of energy drinks. And I don't particularly like sweet beverages. So an energy drink seemed an ideal accompaniment for my loathsome lunch.

As for chocolate breakfast cereal. I make my own low fat, low sugar museli. For a change I'll sometimes breakfast on wholemeal toast, or porridge. Say no more.

In the interests of getting lunch down and keeping it down, I decided not to read the ingredients lists beforehand. Especially not on the turkey.

The turkey was scary stuff; salmon pink (I thought cooked turkey flesh was usually white?), firm and shiny. I was stupid enough to give it a big sniff and broke out in a cold sweat at its avian aroma.

Janice, who'd sampled a bit while I was steeling myself to take a bite, informed me it was foul (no pun intended). She then proceeded to read out the ingredients list, starting with "turkey broth".

Gad, what would go in to mass produced turkey broth? Images of frothy salmon pink stuff abounded. Telling her to shut up, I cut a bit, chewed and swallowed.

A vain attempt to enhance lunch's palatability; smiley face food never worked with the kids and it didn't fool me either. That cylindar thingy to the left is a chunk of turkey spam. Full marks to me for struggling through most of it.

And the verdict?

Turkey spam: Overly salty, glistening, suspiciously pink. I'd voluntarily eat it again if I was stuck on a desert island. Rating = 3.5

Canned carrots: Unpleasantly squishy, salty, 'thin' tasting. Ditto re: the desert island. Rating = 3.5

Energy drink: sweet fizzy taste. Inoffensive but not really my thing. Rating = 5

And for the grand finale, a bowl of Big Bugs 'n Mud with milk, to chase away the spam and carrot taste.

The verdict: Very sweet (38% sugar), but not as sweet as I'd expected. Chocolatey but with an unusual underlying blandness from the puffed wheat, puffed rice and rolled oats. Give me home made museli any day. Rating = 5.

Unlike yesterday's dessert, the sum of the whole with today's lunch was less than the sum of the parts. I had to go to a meeting after lunch and found myself queasily obsessing on spammish thoughts as I drove. Not good.

My little secret

I'll let you in on a little secret: I collect food. I just can't resist the lure of an untried weird and wonderful ingredient. Trouble is, half the time I get my treasures home and either have no idea what to do with it, or lose enthusiasm for the task at hand.

At least the Internet has now been invented, which is invaluable for such foodie dilemmas. I wish I had an Internet connection at home back in the mid '90s when I bought a mock vegetarian sea slug from my local tofu products shop. Stir-frying it with garlic and ginger didn't really cut the mustard.

This is one of my pantries. I've just counted 12 (!) different types of vinegars in there - all of which I use.

My neglected treasures lie in folorn piles on the bench and servery, left there in the hope that sooner or later I'll get so fed up with them cluttering the place, that I'll finally get round to cooking them. Usually the theory works, even if - in the case of the tin of Matzo meal - it takes six months.

Today's food challenge is made with two such ingredients. Which is just as well, because I was working most of the day and didn't have the time or inclination to go trawling the local emporia for new exotic ingredients. As the Chinese say, problem equals opportunity.

The first treasures to try were some round things I found in a bulk bin at an Indian shop a while ago. I can't remember what they were, but I bought them because they reminded me of mini poppadams. The theory was that I could fry them into nice crispy bases for a range of finger food toppings.

They fried in no time, curling into exotic shapes. They were tasty enough in a crisp yet oddly chewy way. Even Rory ate some (well, two). Kieran's friend James, who is usually a pretty fussy eater, even liked them.

By group consensus, we rated them a 6.5.

Next on my list was a packet of Nata de Coco Jubes, product of Singapore. According to the packet these coconut jubes are a "high-fibre, low-calorie and cholestoral-free dessert". (I've never before encountered so many hyphens on a food pack - impressive!). The blurb went on (and this bit really intrigues me): "Spend hours of fun munching these chewy, juicy cubes or mix it with cocktails and other desserts to create your very own treats. Light and fibrous, it's especially suitable for the health conscious."

I just checked the back of the pack and it does indeed have fibre - 1%. Not much, but more than your average jube, I guess.

I'm not sure what the graphic designer was on when s/he developed this packaging.

The contents were...um... juby looking. They smelled weird - like jackfruit (something I detest, thanks to falling ill after eating jackfruit in Thailand years ago). And they tasted even weirder - sort of jackfruity and, indeed, slightly fibrous. Fibrous jubes just seem so wrong.

I'd bought another new ingredient, tapicoa flakes (provenance unknown), this time especially for the challenge.

Gula melaka, the classic Malaysian sago, palm sugar and coconut classic dessert, is one of my favourites. I thought the tapioca flakes would make a passable substitute for the sago, and that the Nata de Coco jubes would be an acceptable addition. Hence, a new-look gula melaka was born:

Okay, I'll admit it looks gross, but the sum of the whole was definitely greater than the sum of the parts. Don, who isn't keen on coconutty things, found it passable. Kieran and James both liked it, as did I. Rory wouldn't even sniff it.

We all agreed the jubes were weird and rated them 4.

The tapioca flakes were harmlessly bland, providing textural rather than taste interest. Kieran gave them an 8, I'd have said a 6.

We agreed the dessert's overall score was a 7.

Not now, not ever

Although it would be easy to complete this challenge by only shopping at my local Chinese supermarket, I think a more diverse culinary approach better reflects the challenge's spirit. So it was off to Sandringham for some Indian inspiration.

I've been hanging on to a "Methi Malai Mater" recipe that one of the shops had on offer, mainly because I'd never tried it's star ingredient, fenugreek leaves. Here's one:

Snigger, snigger.

Keeping it seemly, here are some of its cuzzies:

It looks (and smells) very much like something that would grow in my lawn. That is, if it could fight its way above the kikuyu grass.

While browsing for further nouveau cuisine inspiration, I spotted a packet of brain masala. Curious as to whether it was a masala powder for a brain curry or (horror of horrors) a packet curried brain feast, I took a closer look. All of the ingredients were mercifully vegetal, but the packet helpfully pointed out that it provided sufficient masala for five goat brains.

I did, dear reader, briefly contemplate trying this dish in the interest of a new culinary experience. And contemplation was indeed brief. I. Will. Not. Ever. Never. Eat. A. Brain. Not even a teensy weensy goat one.

I also bought a packet of Chakkalu (round), a "spicy fried snack made from rice flour with ginger extract". Kieran and I thought that "bland" was a more apt description.

Rating: 5

I cooked the Methi Malai Mater when I got home. The recipe describes it as a "rich and flavourful Indian vegetable dish. The Methi or Fenugreek leaves give a wonderful aroma and unique taste..."

I thought the Methi or Fenugreek leaves added little taste, but plenty of stalky texture. They did, however, impart a spicy fenugreek aroma. The dish was nice enough, in a chewy way, but I'd substitute the fenugreek with spinach or finely sliced cabbage leaves if I was to make it again.

Rating: 6

The day's final new experience - something that's been lurking on my kitchen servery for months - was a packet of Falooda dessert mix.

It was easy to make and the milky combination of cubed rosewater jelly, short noodley thingies, nuts, raisins and other mysterious treats were a hit with all of us. Well, all of us, except Rory. It was all too pink and weird for him.

Rating: 9

Day 2: Feeling the fear and eating one anyway

Every time I go to my local Chinese emporium I contemplate the salted duck eggs. And every time I decide "another day". For some reason, I've always been squeemish about the thought of eating duck eggs. The thought of eating a preserved one has been even less appealing.

Time to feel the fear and eat one anyway.

A quick bit of research on the Internet showed that they can be eaten with rice congee, a food I've only eaten a few times and had never cooked myself.

The half-dozen packs of plastic-wrapped salted duck eggs are a product of the People's Republic of China. Trying not to think about all of the Chinese food scare stories I've read of late, I braced myself and bought a pack. Hopefully the ducks have been fed something nicer than melamine.

Here's what they look like inside - not very appealing. Thank God they didn't smell.

I also bought some Japanese seasoned vegetables. Who could resist such a cerise temptation?

Well, now that I've tried it, I can. The pickled veges had an appealing crunch, but a weird taste which I think was from Japenese basil, listed as one of the ingredients. Kieran didn't like it either.

Rating: 4

I made the congee as follows:

1 cup long grain white Jasmine rice

9 c home made chicken stock (you could use water but will get a blander result)

1 tsp salt

2 salty duck eggs, diced

Finely chopped spring onion, to taste

1 or 2 drops each of sesame oil and chilli oil, to taste

Wash rice and add to the water along with the salt. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer 1-2 hours until the rice is creamy.

Add duck egg about 15 minutes before cooking is complete.

Serve topped with a sprinkle of spring onion, and the sesame/chilli oils.

It was nice. The duck yolk had a firm, almost granular texture. It's eggier tasting than chicken's eggs, but was not offensive.

Rating 7

Although I want to push some culinary boundaries, foodie flagellation is not the aim of the game. So I bought some yummy looking things too:

We all loved the strawberry gummy chocolates (product of China) and they were hoovered up in seconds. Even Rory tried them, guzzling as many as he could get away with. As Kieran said "they're just like normal lollies"!

Rating: 10

The cassava cake was less successful; stodgy and bland. Mildly coconut flavoured. Kieran, who is having a growth spurt, was happy to take care of all of the leftovers. I think the cassava cake had the potential to be nice, but was probably mass produced on the cheap. I'd have put a little salt in the coconut/glutinous rice base, plus more sugar in the cassava custard topping.

Rating: 5