West of East

Having munched my way through many Eastern cuisines of late, I recently had a hankering to move westwards; but where to venture?

Europe has some interesting offerings (think Sardinia’s maggot cheese, or Iceland’s rotten shark) but I suspect New Zealand’s food police have probably banned them. And you’re hardly going to get excited if I blog about spaghetti bolognaise or coq au vin.

Inspiration recently struck when friends told me about an Eastern European delicatessen they’d discovered tucked away in a Newmarket back street, so off Kieran and I went to check it out.

I know little about Eastern European cuisine apart from Croatian food (thanks to my Croatian heritage). Don and I spent three days in Moscow in 1990 and my memories of Soviet food were of very long, exotic menus, with virtually everything unavailable. I was a vegetarian at the time and recall canned peas featuring fairly heavily in the meals I was served.

We also spent a week in Bulgaria, which had great cheese and bread, foul wine and really cheap ice cream. But I don’t remember much about the food otherwise.

So I leapt at the chance to discover more. Skazka sells an interesting array of Russian, Polish and Bulgarian products that range from fresh rye bread and pastries, to frozen dumplings and filled pancakes, through to canned and bottled goods and sweets.

Predictably, Kieran zeroed in on Skazka's chocolate and sweet aisles, and I honed in on the weirdest thing I could find: a jar of pine cone elixir. Apparently it’s used on pancakes, in much the same way one would use maple syrup. It sounded intriguing, so into my shopping basket it went, along with a jar of rose elixir.

I've been too busy lately to make breakfast pancakes,
so I had to resort to tasting these au natural.  The rose elixer is
very sweet and subtly rosewater tasting.  Disappointingly, I
couldn't even detect a hint of conifer in the pine elixer; just
a sweet, slightly golden syrupy taste.  Ho hum.

I also bought some sweet cottage cheese pastries, frozen beef-filled pancakes, frozen sweet dumplings, and these treasures:

This home-style cottage cheese was fabulous.  The curds
were far firmer, less watery and more flavoursome
than the cottage cheese one gets in the supermarket. 
I'll be back for more.



Bottled boletus.  Far too cute to eat.

Inspired, I got Googling as soon as I got home and the ensuing cooking blizzard covered the length and breadth of the former Soviet Union:

Here's what became of the cottage cheese - Siberian vatrushki. 
Home-made sweet pastry, filled with a sweet cottage cheese / rum soaked
raisin / lemon rind / egg filling.  The cherry reduction was my own touch.
They tasted as good as they looked, and my lucky sons had
vatrushki in their lunch boxes for days afterwards.

The ultimate rib-sticker: Mashhurda (Uzbek mung bean soup
topped with sour cream).   In addition to mung beans, the
soup contained cubed beef, veges, bay leaves, peppercorns
and rice.  I'll add more liquid next time.  Delete the meat and it
would make a nutritious vegetarian meal. 

Yet another hearty dinner: Holushki (Russian cabbage and sour cream with home made
noodles). And yes, I really did make the noodles.

Two more recipes remain high on my list of things to try ‘Chakhokhbili’ – a Georgian chicken stew that’s chock full of fresh herbs (apparently it absolutely MUST include fresh coriander, dill, tarragon, basil and parsley or the flavour will not be authentic) and Medovie – a complicated Russian recipe for honey cake layered with a filling comprising unbelievable quantities of butter, condensed milk and - you guessed it - sour cream.

While it has been interesting trying Soviet food, the things I've tried have been pretty stodgy fare. Which is fine in the depths of a Russian winter when it’s minus thirty, but not quite so great on a warm Auckland spring evening.

Skazka
16 Kingdon Street
Newmarket
Auckland
http://www.skazka.co.nz/

Food porn

There’s something in females’ DNA that gets us really, really excited about cake, pudding and all manner of sweet stuff. Some women pretend not to give a fig, as it were, but they’re either lying, unhealthily obsessed with the size of their thighs, or are coming down with something.

Men are different. Although some probably spend quite a bit of time obsessing about thighs – usually someone else’s – many men genuinely don’t care for cakes and desserts. No strategic eating at restaurants for them; they simply flick straight past the dessert menu and head for (horrors of horrors) – the cheeseboard or – worse still – opt for nothing to round off the meal.

So, guys, you might want to go and get your kicks somewhere else on the Internet today because this blog is graphically and gratuitously all about cake and dessert.

Yum.

I won’t, however, be regaling you with accounts of sweet treats I’ve whipped up out of the Edmonds cookbook. Nope, every offering involves something I've invented.

My profiteroles dinner party dessert offering looked like mutants, but they tasted great. I experimented
with using freeze-dried plum powder when making the filling. The plum crème patisserie filling was tasty
but a little gluggy. Plum powder folded into sweetened whipped cream worked best.

I made two different versions of this spice cake, one that used the traditional all spice,
cinnamon and nutmeg spice mix, and one that used five-spice instead. Both versions of
the cake were lovely. Do you like freeze dried lychee nod to the East on the five-spice version?
A bit over the top maybe, but then again, I reckon 'more is more' when it comes to food.

Readers of my Horror Food blog may recall the sauced duck tongue surprise I took to our
friends’ dinner party, and write me off as the dinner guest from hell. At the risk of ruining my
reputation, here’s the dessert creation I took to offset the duck tongues.
(See the end of this post for the recipe.)

I could go on, but I’m worried all that sugary, creamy excitement might prove too much for my female readers. So let’s plummet back to Earth with a bump.

Domestic goddess I may be, but even goddesses have their off days as I discovered when I attempted to make a sponge cake using a liberal measure of freeze-dried passion fruit powder in the batter.



L-R: Dish sponge, my sponge...or was that, my sponge, dish sponge?



Not even lashings of whipped cream could
redeem this sad puppy. 
PS: The right hand photo above was the dish sponge.

Anna’s cardamon scented roasted apple custard tart

Roasted apples

1.7 kg Granny Smith apple slices (peeled and cut into quarters or eighths)
½ c soft brown sugar
32 g butter

Toss apple slices in butter and sugar and roast until golden.  Leave until completely cool before using.

Sweet short pastry

170 g softened butter
85 g sugar
1 small egg
4 drops vanilla essence
260 g standard plain flour

Lightly cream butter and sugar. Add egg and vanilla and beat until just combined. Add flour and mix until the pastry comes away from the sides of the bowl. Be careful not to over mix. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before using (overnight is fine).

Custard

5 eggs
6 tbsp sugar
2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp vanilla
2 c lukewarm milk
1 c lukewarm cream

Beat eggs, sugar, cardamon and vanilla together.  Pour in warmed milk and cream while beating, and mix until combined with egg mix but not foamy.

Method

Roll out the pastry to about 3 mm thickness and line a greased 28 cm, deep flan dish. You can brush some lightly beaten egg white over the pastry to help prevent leakage.

Place roasted apples over the pastry case then gently pour in custard mixture. Bake at 180 degrees C for 50 minutes or until the custard sets.

A lunch to drool over

I've been spending an unhealthy amount of time fantasizing about eating saliva chicken after spotting it in a local shop last month.

Despite its disgusting connotations, the dish’s unconventional name utterly intrigued me so I sought enlightenment from a Chinese friend.

Apparently saliva chicken tastes so delicious that one’s mouth salivates at the mere thought, hence the name; I would have thought “mouth watering” to be a far more marketable title.

I’ve been eating out a lot lately and have felt the need to give my body a bit of a rest over the past week but today the temptation of an ecstatic food experience proved irresistible. So off I headed to buy myself a chicken saliva lunch.

It’s sold in an unprepossessing little outlet in Mt Albert’s Lim Chhour complex. Tables outside the shop display a range of fried doughy snacks, and suchlike. I’ve tried a few but they’re nothing amazing although the massive omelettey square looks like it could be worth a go one hungry day.

Beyond briefly ogling the saliva chicken, I’d never taken much notice of the contents of a chiller insider the shop. Closer inspection revealed all sorts of northern Chinese goodies, so I decided to buy myself a mini banquet.



Saliva chicken.  The
lumpy bits are peanuts,
sesame seeds and chilli
flakes.



The saliva chicken lived up to its promise and was really nice: salty, slightly acetic, savoury, chilli spiced. I suspect that today's version was probably a bit more basic than some but it was still good.

Bean curd stick salad.

Less delicious was the bean curd stick and carrot salad, served in a very light oil and slightly chillied dressing. It was okay, but smelled disconcertingly of old socks. The taste was improved by combining the coriander garnish with the bean curd stick but there was far too little garnish to lift the dish to a new level.

"Crispy" kigou.  Tasted
more like
"chewy" kigou!

As for the crispy kigou, I had no idea what it was when I bought it and, now I’ve eaten some, I still have no idea. I’m pretty sure it’s vegetal. It tastes similar to Korean kimchi and it’s really, really chewy so I didn’t eat my way through much before aborting the mission.

A crispy kigou fights
back.

Although I enjoy pushing my foodie boundaries, there are some lines I never intend cross - unlike a blogger that I recently discovered. Here’s one of the most stomach churning foodie accounts I have ever read: http://www.allyoucanteat.com/2011/05/pig-brain-and-pig-spine-soup/

Horror food

Readers of this blog often comment how adventurous I am. While it’s true that I like to push my culinary boundaries, I have my limits.

Just in case you think I recklessly eat every weird thing that comes my way, I thought I’d share a few horrors that are well down my ‘to eat’ list - such as this offering that I spotted this in a local Chinese cafe yesterday.  I suspect I may get around to trying it one day just for the hell of it.  

This product range really amuses me. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to design cheerful packaging that belies the horrors within. What’s even funnier is that it’s all labelled in English even though, apart from a few weirdos like me, most native English speakers would recoil at the thought of eating duck icky bits.



A foodie friend recently invited us over for dinner and, when I asked what he’d like us to bring, he replied “scare us”, so off I toddled to the shop selling the abovementioned duck bits.

Sauced, semi-dried duck tongue.

Given that he lived in Hong Kong for many years, and his wife is Hong Kong Chinese, I should have known better than to present them with this lame attempt at horror food.

They hoovered them up without a blink and offered to cook me some freshly prepared ones some day.

I’ve cheated a bit with this example, because I ended up eating a couple of the duck tongues. They’re ok.

Pig spine soup (spotted on the menu of a Korean restaurant in Queen Street).  As much as I admire this restaurant’s pragmatic honesty, I don’t like pork and the dish’s main ingredient is spine. What more can I say?

The other night I heard Kieran coughing and spluttering out in the kitchen, followed by the tap running hard. It transpired he’d gone to make vegemite toast and, in his rush to satisfy his hunger, had grabbed the first jar he saw with a yellow and red label. Poor lad; this sambal is seriously HOT.

The Chinese may have cornered the horror food market, but Stutz burger bar in Ohakune is giving them a run for their money.

My husband and kids reckoned their burgers are the worst they’ve ever tried. As for Stutz’s garlic chips, even my greaseaholic family was flummoxed by this soggy garlic butter topped nightmare.

They offered me some, and I was tempted to kill off my arteries and try them just so I could regale you with how ghastly they were. But my nerves failed and I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Like mother, like son

Despite my best efforts, I’ve found that parenthood and exotic food don’t always go together. I’ve managed to train my family to at least try some of my more unusual offerings, but they don’t usually go for seconds.

Plain fooders Don and Rory are lost causes, and I confess to knowingly serving ethnic foods that are torture on a plate to them. But my 12-year-old son Kieran is another story.

Like me, he has always been interested in trying new things so I didn’t have to look far for a companion when I saw an Indonesian culture and food festival advertised in this morning’s paper.

I’m relatively familiar with Indonesian cuisine but it has a very low profile in New Zealand due to our miniscule Indonesian population (3261, according to the 2006 census).

Most of the Indonesian food I’ve tried has been of the satay / gado gado / beef rendang variety but I know there’s far more to the cuisine than those dishes. Needless to say, I was seeking something at the more ‘interesting’ end of the scale when Kieran and I headed off to the festival.

Like the local Indonesian population, the festival was small; four or five food stalls, a similar number of craft stalls, and a simple programme of movies and cultural performances.

True to form, I steered us towards the food stalls with the weirdest looking offerings.  Here's what we bought:





Croquettes that I think were made from
pancakes stuffed with carrot sticks and something
else, crumbed and deep fried.  Served with a very
tasty peanut sauce (and a blob of hot chilli
sauce for me!).





Croquette innards.



 

Fish cake stuffed with egg.  Served with a
slightly sweet-sour-hot liquidy sauce that had little
chunks of cucumber in it.  Nice enough but it would
have been good to have a bigger spoon so
that we could get more sauce with the fishcake. 
I love the way runny Asian food is often sold 
in little plastic bags that are tied with a
rubber band; so pragmatic!

A medley of weird things.  Clockwise from bottom
left: hot chilli sauce, fried green chilli, fried cubes
of mysterious savoury gelatinous stuff, fried tofu
cubes, fried brown stuff, tempeh (the big rectangle
of grey-white) with unidenfitied sauce, sweet
jackfruit curry, soya sauce (?) boiled egg. 
Unusual. Not a favourite with either of us but
I'm glad we tried it anyway.



Steamed coconut flavoured cakelets.  Nice.



















A sweet cold soup that was similar to
the Indian dessert, Falooda.  The Indonesian
version contained cubes of Nata de Coco (a
densely textured coconut juice jelly), bits of
avocado, finely shredded coconut flesh,
mysterious orange bits that may or may not have
been mango and/or carrot.  Tasted far nicer than
it sounds.























To be honest, none of it knocked my socks off but it was nevertheless great to try the real deal and we’ll be back for more next year.

What did knock my socks off, however, was Kieran’s willingness to try everything. He didn’t like all of it, but was still open to the experience.

I’m so proud to be his mum!



The charm factor

A bit of charm goes a long way, as I recently discovered during two quite different dining experiences.

After months of good intentions, I’ve finally got round to trying KungFu Noodles at 636 Dominion Road (Balmoral), a north western Chinese restaurant that had been recommended to me for its tasty kebabs and handmade noodles. Rumour has it that Shaolin monks run the place, although none were in evidence during my visit.

Despite being warned that the upstairs dining rooms were little changed from their earlier incarnation as a shopkeeper’s residence, I was somewhat taken aback when led up a very dark, dingy and narrow staircase into what may have previously been a bedroom. The carpet was filthy and badly stained, and the room smelt like wees. The sensory assault continued when a table load of Chinese patrons swooped in and noisily power slurped their lunches down right behind us.

Undeterred, we got ordering.

North western China is predominantly Muslim so – unlike most of the Chinese regional cuisine I have tried - lamb, rather than pork, features heavily.

I’ve got to take my hat off to the Chinese. Unlike us Westerners, most whom turn our noses up at the mere thought of variety meat, the Chinese waste nothing – not even chickens’ knees.

You’d think that eating chicken’s knees would be a knobbly and unfulfilling experience but you’d be wrong. They were surprisingly nice in a mildly cartilaginous way. The knees were threaded onto needle sharp thin metal kebabs, which I’m sure must have been hidden from sight when the restaurant was given its health and safety grading, and tasted charcoally and delicious.

The only thing to get the thumbs down were the deep fried battered lamb chunks, mainly because whatever flour they used resulted in a weirdly soft batter. The taste was fine, but the flaccid texture failed to win any of us over.

Although I liked Kung Fu Noodles’ food, the overly aromatic ambience of its upstairs rooms means I’m unlikely to be a regular customer.

A few days later I enjoyed an eating experience at the opposite end of the charm scale; Mapiu’s cafe.

Before you go rushing to Google Maps, Mapiu is the only settlement in the 63 km wilderness on State Highway 4 between Te Kuiti and Taumaranui. Apart from the cafe, it boasts a community hall and a primary school attended by 22 kids. It’s not the sort of place you’d expect to find a cafe, much less a good one.

The cafe is run by a retired couple, who make all of the food (pastry included) themselves. The husband looks after the customers, while his wife bakes 35 pies and all sorts of tasty cakes, biscuits and slices every day.

All of it is good old fashioned, tasty Kiwi home cooked fare prepared with care and a clear sense of pride in what is made. My steak pie was chock full of meat (no gristle, fat or excessive gravy here!), and was served on bone china with a side dish of homemade tomato chutney. The fruit crumble slice was filling and tasty, and the coffee was good.

Mapiu cafe is located in the former general store which, the proprietor informed us, used to be owned by his father. Memorabilia and object d’art adorn the interior, creating a deslighfully quirky ambience.

As much as I love trying weird and wonderful food from other cultures, Mapiu’s cafe provided a welcome opportunity to reconnect with excellent and unpretentious traditional Kiwi food in a lovely setting. What a fantastic find!

The cafe's interior was charming; almost like a little museum.

Downtown Mapiu.

From Mmmmm! to Hmm...

A foodie friend recently gave me a can of mouloukhieh that he’d found in a Middle Eastern grocery. It was something I’d never even heard of, much less tasted.

Also known as mloukeih, molokhia and Jew’s mallow, this leafy green vegetable has – according to the Internet - a mucilaginous texture and laxative properties.

As the owner of a large can of mysterious green slime that may possibly play havoc with my bowels, I decided to bide my time and wait until I was in the right frame of mind to do it justice.

Meanwhile, on Saturday night I enjoyed a considerably more conventional food experience in the form of dinner at Molten Restaurant in Mt Eden. I’ve eaten there a number of times over the years and, after watching The Food Truck on telly (when Molten’s chef Michael Van de Elzen tries to create healthy alternatives to a range of fast food favourites), Don and I thought time to reacquaint ourselves with his slow food.

And I’m glad we did because the food and the service were faultless. My entree of vine wrapped Meyer lemon scented goats cheese, Melba toast and peperonata was delicious.

Unless it’s salmon, which I hate cooking at home because it makes everything stink, I almost never order fish at restaurants but Molten’s crayfish crusted hapuka with walnut fritters appealed. It was a delicious choice, which I’ve been thinking about ever since. It even inspired me to buy some fish, with the view to baking it in some kind of a crust for dinner tonight.

Don’s beef croquette entree and six week old Scotch steak main were also lovely. Neither of us had eaten such well hung meat before and found it to be fine-grained, tender and not at all gamey. We shared a panacotta with baked pears – also divine.

I expected to be confronted with
a can of slime, but the mouloukhieh
was quite watery.

Unfortunately I can’t quite say the same today’s mouloukhieh lunch even though the canned version is blissfully free of the mucilaginous properties that its fresh cousin apparently has.

Using an Internet recipe for inspiration, I fried some onion and chilli then added chicken stock, tomato paste, a bay leaf, some cooked chickpeas and the mouloukhieh. To the cooked soup I added a mixture of garlic, salt and dried coriander than had been pounded to a paste then fried in butter.

It was okay – quite tart and lemony like sorrel – and was very green and healthy tasting (so much so, that I had to have a piece of cake afterwards to recover).

I had seconds, but don’t have plans to repeat the performance with the large pot of leftovers now gracing my bench.

Mouloukhieh soup, anyone?

As luck has it, I’m catching up with my friend for lunch tomorrow. No prizes for guessing what I’m going to give him!

Molten Restaurant (open for lunch and dinner)
422 Mount Eden Road
Mount Eden 1024
(09) 638 7236
www.molten.co.nz

Greed, gluttony and sloth

You know you’ve had a great weekend away when you've managed to commit most of the fun Deadly Sins.

Despite my love of food and piggish appetite, the thought of getting fat horrifies me so I generally employ a fair degree of self-control with respect to eating and exercise. That is, until I go on holiday. For some reason, holidays bring out my inner fat slob and this weekend was no exception.

The kids and I spent the weekend at Mangawhai with our friends Lindsay and Freeman, and their two kids. In addition to being good company, Lindsay and Freeman are avid foodies, so I knew it was going to be just my kind of a trip.

Mangawhai is only an hour and a half’s drive from Auckland but we managed to take nearly four hours getting there, thanks to two foodie stops and some grocery shopping en route. The Ginger Cafe in Warkworth’s main street turned out to be worth a visit, and a trip north is never complete without stopping for cheese and salty liquorice at the Dutch cheese shop in Kaiwaka.

Upon arrival I opened some absinthe. I’ve heard all about the Green Fairy, but have never had occasion to try it and never been willing to commit to buying a large bottle just in case it was revolting. The perfect opportunity presented itself when I recently spotted a miniature bottle in my local liquor store.

At 60 per cent proof, it was - unsurprisingly – very strong. As for the taste; herbal probably best describes it. It was okay, I guess, but I can’t say I’ll be hurrying to buy more.

Our post-arrival dinner comprised vast amounts of potato crisps, cheese, even vaster amounts of red wine and cognac, and – late in the evening – a lamb tagine. I couldn’t face breakfast the next morning.

Although it’s a small place, with a permanent population of around 900, Mangawhai’s beachside location and relatively close proximity to Auckland has enabled a small yet vibrant food culture to develop.

First on our ‘to do’ list was checking out the Saturday morning market in the village hall. The foul weather resulted in there being fewer stalls than usual. I had to admire the owners of one of only two outdoor stalls, huddling in a sodden tent mired in a sea of mud, and I felt a bit mean not at least buying a handful of curly kale or a bunch of fresh violets.

There were maybe 20 stalls inside, selling an interesting range of (mostly) food items: freshly roasted coffee; locally grown olive oil; crusty sour dough bread; home-baked cakes, savouries and morning teas; locally made sausages, pates and salamis; cheeses; pickles and jams; and a range of fruit and veges.

From there it was off to the fabulous Bennetts complex across the road.

Even if you’re not a chocoholic, the chocolate shop is well worth a visit. True to form I went for the most unusual flavours I could find and can pronounce that thyme chocolate tastes surprisingly good, as does cardamom chocolate. The fresh coriander chocolate was disappointingly bland.

After buying up large, we headed upstairs to a delicatessen, where I zeroed in on a display of chilli sauces. The man behind the counter advised me that the top of the range was New Zealand’s hottest sauce, made from the world’s hottest chilli, Bhut Jolokia.

I couldn’t resist asking for a sample. Warning me that it was unbelievably hot, he cautioned Freeman and I to taste only the tiniest bit.

Actually, it was okay and we both guzzled the sample and hoovered up seconds. I didn’t even have to pretend that my eyes weren’t watering. The sauce was actually pretty hot, but I’ve had far worse in the form of an almost unbearably firey Mexican chilli sauce I bought at Auckland market some years ago.



I won’t bore you with all the details, other than to say we ate a lot on Saturday.

  

It might have only been

10 degrees but it's never

too cold for ice cream.

Undeterred, we returned to Mangawhai village that evening to try dinner at Bennetts Cafe. It was a lovely meal. The setting was charming – Italianate, complete with a large open fire. The service was friendly and very obliging. And the food was nice too. I sampled the lamb shank in a tomato stew, which was meltingly good. My roast chicken with Puy lentils and watercress aioli was very nice, although I’d have preferred the chicken to be falling off the bone.

Despite being full, Miss Piggy couldn’t resist concluding the meal with cinnamon doughnuts and rich chocolate dipping sauce topped with a large pillow of whipped cream. Yum.

The weather remained foul on Sunday so I barely moved from the couch. Most of the day was spent lazing about reading, doing the crossword, talking and eating: chocolate, coffee, cheese, crisps, bread, leftover tagine and anything else we could lay our hands on.

 

We dragged ourselves out for a bracing and rather sodden walk along the beach after lunch, warming ourselves up with instant soup, chunks of ciabatta and the last of the cheese upon our return.

All too soon, it was time to return home. As I got in the car it dawned on me that a weekend of gluttony, a longish journey and skin-tight jeans and were not the best combination.

Rory's roasted marshmallow.

And no, I didn't eat it.

Surreptitiously, I pulled my jersey down and undid my trousers so I could drive home without passing out. 

Non sequitur

It won't surprise you to learn that I’m a “live to eat” kind of a gal. No sooner do I finish a meal then, chances are, I’m thinking ahead to the next repast. Some people count sheep when they can’t sleep; I plan my next food foray.

People who don’t care for food perplex me. I happen to be married to one of those and it took me years to accept that, no matter how many weird and wonderful things I tried to tempt him with, Don prefers plain food.

To his credit, he will at least try things (in an early victory, I managed to convert him to olives) but give him steak, chips and peas over foreign muck any day.

As much as it pains me to admit it, I’ve recently joined the plain food brigade.

I’ve felt unwell all week, which probably came about because I've had one or other of my kids home sick from school for most of the past fortnight. It might not actually be their fault because my lurgey seems different to theirs, but I’m going to blame them anyway.

Even though I haven’t been bedridden beyond needing to lie down from time to time, I’ve been off my food. Weird and wonderful food holds no appeal. Worse still, any kind of food fails to interest me in the least.

I've managed to work up an appetite a few times, only to feel over-full almost the instant I started eating. Cooking for the family has been a pain and my minimal efforts have been plain in the extreme (“Yay!” say Don and Rory).

My love of weird and wonderful food helps to define who I am, and finding I don’t give a damn is exasperating, boring and dislocating.

I miss the adventurous, gluttonous, food-obsessed Anna and I hope she comes back soon!

Social experiments

As much as I enjoy trying new foods out on myself, it’s far more fun experimenting on friends.

Don't get me wrong; I enjoy solitary pleasures as much as the next person, particularly when it comes to sneaking the cake mixing bowl leftovers before the kids spot them.  But, as you know, food usually tastes better when eaten in company.

Last year an acquaintance attended the master class at the Melbourne Food and Wine Show and ended up with an extra copy of the recipe book, which she very kindly gave to me.

I’ve cooked a few things out of it – all delicious – but one in particular caught my eye: Melbourne chef Adam d’Sylva’s Vietnamese inspired “crispy prawn and tapioca betel leaf”. It comprised a paste of Vietnamese spiced prawns; wrapped in betel leaf; coated in a batter comprising tapioca, rice and glutinous rice flours; and deep-fried.

Betel nuts, wrapped in betel leaf, are chewed in many Asian and African countries for their stimulating effects. The idea of cooking with betel leaves rather appealed and, although a cursory trawl through my local Indian grocery stores drew a blank, the recipe stuck in my mind.

  

Last week I nipped into my local Spice Invader (love that name) to top up on a few Indian supplies when what should I spot but fresh betel leaves! I bought some and promptly invited friends and willing lab rats, Lindsay and Freeman, over for lunch.



Crispy prawn and tapioca betel
leaf fritters.


And what a success it was. The fritters were absolutely delicious. On their own, betel leaves taste surprisingly spicy and unsurprisingly vegetal – a quality that became virtually unnoticeable when they were wrapped around shrimp paste, battered and fried.

I’d definitely cook this again, using spinach or sorrel leaves if I couldn’t get hold of betel leaves.

The following evening provided another experimentation opportunity when we had Mark and Fiona over to dinner. I'd never cooked any of it before, with main and dessert being drawn from cookbooks. Peter Gordon’s Moroccan lamb shanks were delicious, as was the Australian Woman’s Weekly Dessert Cookbook’s crepes with pears, fresh dates and spiced mascarpone.

Rather than play safe with another cookbook experiment, I decided to cut loose with the pre-dinner nibbles and made this creation – a savoury ‘ice’ cream.

I bought fresh wonton wrappers, brushed them with a little oil and sprinkled them with sea salt and sesame seeds. The wrappers were then wound around cream horn moulds and baked 10 minutes or so until golden and crispy.

Great idea so far, but what to put in them? I’m not sure why, but something about making finger food sends me into a total brain freeze. Hurrah for supermarket dips and pita crisps, is all I can say.

I ended up putting some fried strips of lemony leek in the bottom, then piled creamy spinach moose on top. A blob of harissa provided a colourful finish. The 'ice creams' were edible – but only okay at the best. There was far too much cream in the spinach moose, making for an overly rich and sickly effect. Mark and Fiona politely ate them but I don’t think that creation is ever going to win me Master Chef.




Everyone's still smiling
despite my creative capers.

I think the wonton cones worked well though, so I’ll keep working on the idea.

As much as I love to involve friends in my experiments, some investigations are best left unshared.


While buying the betel leaves, I spotted this rather intriguing looking "eating gum" amongst the packets of whole spices.

When I asked the storekeeper what it was used for, he disconcertingly gave me a really odd look and informed me it was “medicinal”.

He didn’t proffer any further information about what it was supposed to cure, but did volunteer that it needed to be soaked in water and could be consumed when it had gone all "fluffy".

I could, of course, have put it back on the shelf at that point.  But I was feeling bored and buying a $4 pack of mysterious medicinal Indian 'eating gum' provided the welcome diversion of a cheap thrill.

I briefly considered offering some to Lindsay and Freeman when they were here for lunch but decided against it, so they remain blissfully unaware of their narrow escape. After they left, I soaked a few grains in a ramekin of water until, sure enough, it dissolved into fluffy ooze.

Tempted though I was to abort the mission at this point, I scooped up a finger full and tasted; it was gummy, sour, revolting. Ugh!

Who knows what I was trying to cure myself of? Whatever it was, I think I’d rather keep the disease, thanks.

A lucky break

After a desultory and largely unsuccessful effort at being productive at work this morning, lunch time – and the perfect opportunity for a foodie diversion – intervened.

I decided to visit a restaurant I’d read about, which serves authentic Dalian style Chinese food but all I could remember was that it was at 700 and something Dominion Road.

I spotted a small restaurant at number 704 and wondered whether that was the Dalian place. There was no English on the signage and the only patrons were Chinese. You can’t get more authentic than that, so I decided to try my luck.

They had some menus in English and I quickly surmised that the food was fairly bog standard northern Chinese fare – with nothing from the Dailan cuisine, so far as I could see. My dilemma over whether to stay was quickly resolved when I spotted ‘Wang Wang Special Soup’.

In my experience, many Chinese dishes are pretty ‘special’ to Western tastes, so I was intrigued to find out what could be so unusual about this soup that even the Chinese would label it as special.

The waitress was obliging but not particularly fluent in English. She managed to convey that it had no pork, contained tofu and potato, had something else that she didn’t know the English for but whatever it was, she advised, it wasn’t rabbit.

She also told me that she thought I wouldn’t like it. So what else could I do, but order some?

As I waited for the soup to arrive, I started to worry. What say ‘wang wang’ was Chinese for ‘intestine’ or other really icky bit? Worse still, what say it referred to an appendage with a similar sounding English name?

The waitress had warned me and I’d ignored her. No matter what wang wang might be, I’d have to save face and – for the sake of all other Westerners who despair when given Westernised versions of ethnic food – I’d have to eat it.

Fate was kind to me today. Wang Wang Special Soup was what I’d imagine Chinese invalid food to be. It was based on a thickened, slightly oily, faintly sesame flavoured stock and contained very finely shredded: cucumber, carrot, black fungus and tofu skin. Delicate fronds of just set beaten egg waved gently amongst the other ingredients.

Deliciously, it was topped with a pile of deep fried very finely shredded potato sticks, which provided a crunchy counterpoint to soup’s soft, unctuous texture. How clever! I’m going to borrow that idea for use on a Western style thick winter soup.

As for the Dalian place? I almost got it right: for the record, it’s two doors down at number 708.

Closer to home

Having gastronomically roamed the globe this year, it was time to rest my weary taste buds on Saturday and reconnect with something closer to home; kai.

Maori cuisine is, for the most part, pretty plain although, to their credit, Maori have a few pungent delicacies such as rotten corn (kaanga wai) and shark liver (ate mango) that would challenge even the Chinese. You’ll hardly be surprised to learn that I’ve tried rotten corn a couple of times (it’s perfectly eatable in a stinky, foul cheese or fermented tofu kind of a way). I’ll confess to being a bit intimidated by the shark liver but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of giving it a go one day.

Hangi food is arguably the best known aspect of Maori cuisine and I’ve always loved it. I grew up in Palmerston North and the school I went to probably had only one or two Maori kids out of roll of 300 or so. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, every couple of years a corner of the rugby field would get dug up for a hangi.

I remember a great sense of excitement as the hangi was opened, and the evocative aroma of hot earth and steaming sacks, mingled with food. All these years later, that smell still takes me right back to Russell Street primary school circa 1970!

I also love the way hangi food is cooked using a technique that, apart from a few modern twists (using metal hangi baskets and hessian sacks), has been unchanged since time immemorial.

Unfortunately, I rarely get to eat hangi food but seek it out wherever I can. For years I’ve been muttering about making a hangi, and even have a book that gives step-by-step instructions, but – to pardon the pun - it’s gone into the ‘too hard’ basket.

 As is often the case, fate intervened to put things right by way of a hangi making workshop in Auckland Council’s Matariki festival’s programme of events. I enrolled like a shot!

As the workshop drew near, I wondered what the day would hold and wondered who else would be interested enough to dedicate an entire Saturday to the cause. Would there be lots of foodies? Or would there be just me, and a handful of balding, ponytailed whiteys intent on deep and meaningfully connecting with their inner Maui?

Arriving at Te Tahawai Marae, Pakuranga, I was pleased and surprised to note the paucity of ponytails amongst the 30-strong group. We were a diverse bunch, with participants ranging in age from fresh-faced university students, through to a lovely but very doddery old man whom I feared wouldn’t survive the day.

After being welcomed onto the marae, we were asked to say where we were born and what our heritage was. Talk about United Nations! Apart from a handful of kiwis, participants were born all over the globe, including China, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Nigeria, Iraq, Spain, France and Portugal.

We were split into three groups and took turns at different aspects of preparing the hangi: food preparation, fire preparation and weaving.

Me weaving a nikau thingy.

The food was standard hangi fare, albeit using far better quality ingredients than is often the case, thanks to the sponsor, New World’s generosity (thought I’d give them a plug).

Into the hangi baskets went: pork, whole chickens, spuds, kumera, pumpkin, bread stuffing and whole cabbages (cut out the core, put butter, salt and garlic in then put the core plug back in.).

The workshop was incredibly well run by three Maori men, who showed us everything from the mechanics of preparing a hangi pit and the food – through to how to weave table decorations and hangi pit covers from nikau fronds.

Intriguingly, we were also shown how to create fire by rubbing Mahoe sticks against koikomako wood. It looked like really hard work.

Unearthing the hangi.

We concluded the afternoon by learning a waiata (song), which we sang to guests who joined us for dinner.

As it happened, judging for a rewena competition was also held on the marae. Rewena paraoa, a Maori specialty, is bread made using a potato water starter. A kuia (female elder) told us about making rewena and showed us a sample from a friend’s starter that had been kept going for 53 years. It smelled delicate – very subtly yeasty.

Better still, we got to try the entries. They were both delicious, but the one made using the starter with the impressive lineage was streets ahead in its sophisticated taste and texture.

Hangied pork and cabbage
ready to come out of
the ground.

After a full and interesting day, it was at last time to eat the object of our attention. The hangied food was lovely; delicately flavoured, wholesome and hearty – and utterly unpretentious.

I knew I would enjoy the workshop because I love hangied food. Yet, in a funny way, the hangi dinner wasn’t necessarily the star of the show.

One way and another, every single aspect of the day combined to create a far richer and more fulfilling experience than I could have anticipated.

As is often the case, food was the unifying factor, but what made the experience so special was our hosts’ willingness to so openly share their culture with us – and our collective willingness to be open to and partake in that knowledge. Maybe I’d better go and grow a ponytail.

Yummy, yum!