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Two for One!


A day off yesterday people, I took the self indulgent trivia feedback badly but I have had plenty of request’s to carry on so here are a couple of days efforts.  I lit a brazier on my deck last night and spent two hours on the phone, some how not noticing how much of that yummy rose went down. I am not sure if David is open for business but give it a go here http://www.hamdenestate.co.nz/ I have heard reports of other people ordering wine online.



Warm and sunny in Hawera today with little wind, I did 4 hours work and have been outside bottling  my own plum wine, thirteen litres of Foleys Folly 2019, it is nice and dry, a perfect afternoon tipple.  Feijoas are in season now so if you want to have a crack at your own wine here is a tried and tested recipe thanks to the queen of wine, art  and ukulele, Ange MacAlpine.



Feijoa Wine


10 Kg feijoa

4kg Sugar

6 litres water

Wash and freeze the feijoas, defrost, cut in half and squash into a bucket. Dissolve the sugar in the water and add to the bucket and cover it with a tea towel secured with something, I use a bungee. Put it in a warm place and stir it every day to stop any mould growth. After a few days it will start to ferment and become frothy and bubbly, keep stirring it daily for about a week. Then strain the liquid off and return to a sanitised bucket or fermenter with an tight lid with an airlock in it. This allows the wine to continue to ferment without any bugs getting in. Leave for a couple of months and then rack, we siphon the liquid off using a small plastic hose, discard the sludge in the bottom and return to a clean bucket/fermenter with lid and airlock. Leave another 2 months and then siphon into clean bottles, wait another two months and then drink. The longer you leave it the better it gets, now we are a few years in most of what we drink is a year old and the bucket I bottled today was over a year old. Buckets are easier to store than bottles.



Crap weather again yesterday and as I could not stand to throw out the basil from the sorbet and had a bowl of green tomatoes from the hot house rescue, I knocked this up. 


Green Tomato & Basil Chutney


1.5 kg roughly chopped green tomatoes

3 green apples, peeled & sliced

1 onion, peeled & sliced

The basil pulp from the sorbet, about 1 C

2 C white vinegar

1 C white Sugar

1 T salt

1 t tamarind

Combine in a pan, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about three hours. Give is a bit of a blast with a stick blender and bottle in sterilized jars.








This was breakfast on Sunday…………….



Smoked Salmon & Preserved Lemon Omelette

2 eggs

50 g smoked salmon, sliced

A dash of milk

½ t preserved lemon finely chopped

A t capers

2 T cream cheese

¼ onion slicked

Oil

Salt & pepper

Fry the onion in the oil until slightly coloured, meanwhile beat the eggs with a fork ad a splash of milk the lemon and salt & pepper. Pour into the pan as the edged form up drag them in with a the fork and tilt the pan to let more mixture run into the exposed part of the pan, do this several times and them add the salmon, capers and dot the cream cheese around the pan. Finish under the grill until the cheese is brown. 

You will see that I took some styling notes from Emma Boyd's blog in this photo, I am not sure I have achieved quite the same level of culinary photography chic as she does. You can check her blog here including very sexy food recipes, food styling and photography.






And this was the triumph of the weekend, crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. I had some beautiful pears from the garden of friends, Jake Goonan and Rebecca Martin, notable as growers of good things and lenders of good dogs! I consulted my books and came up with this recipe adapted slightly from one in Nigel Slaters, The Kitchen Diaries which I think if it came to desert island cookbooks would win over all the others.





Pear & Vanilla Cake

150g Butter

150g Vanilla caster sugar

150g Flour

1 t Baking powder

3 Eggs

4 Ripe pears, peeled and cored, chopped into small squares

1 t vanilla essence

2 T brown sugar



Cream the butter and sugar, whisk the eggs with the vanilla essence and add slowly, sift the baking powder and flour then stir gently into the mixture. Transfer mixture to a greased cake tin and spread the pears on top, the sprinkle with brown sugar, bake at 180 degrees for about 50 minutes.





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