Entertaining!

Forty-bloody-nine days of staying home, who would of thought, for those of you that have been following since the outset, that is a vast departure from Rule 4. Only stay in Hawera 1 weekend a month. Never mind Rule 1. Don't hang out with shit people. I note that I have been shit on occasion but I have managed to turn a blind eye to those performances, it may have been more enlightened to head down a path of self development, second note, that has not eventuated. Like everyone I have become moderately competent at several forms of video conferencing platform, attended a weekly quiz arrrgggh…… if you had told me………, failed to achieve any personal betterment, had not a single alcohol free day, have many, many, man, many new website logins, navigated this bloody blog site, survived an online gig without the lights quite going out and have completed projects that have been on the to-do list for years. The things I enjoyed, probably like everyone else was the extra fr...

I seem to be getting busier with work again therefore less time to cook and blog. I have been paying quite a lot of attention to the cheese, the crottin/marcellin appears to be growing the correct mould and two of the goudas look good but the first one we made seems to be growing mould it shouldn’t........eeeek! I have been fiddling with the storage temperature and are now wiping it daily with the brine but I am not sure it is helping may I may need to cut it off. Last night’s dinner was particularly good, I found a piece of Hapuka in the freezer and got the idea from Al Brown’s Eat Up, another desert island cookbook and his best yet, every single page you turn is a recipe that is enticing. Panfried Hapuka with Oyster Soup 4 small carrots ½ an onion Butter 12 oysters plus the juice from yesterday’s 12 1 t dry vegetable stock 1 t honey ¼ C brandy 300 ml cream Oil 2 hapuka steaks Chana flour Basil leaves A lemon ...

This morning I made kefir yoghurt, now that we have kefir making on the go we are looking for things to do with it. I made two types, plain old yoghurt with milk and a batch with 50/50 coconut cream and milk. Both have turned out well they could have been thicker and my zealot adviser David Asher did tell me that the longer I stirred it the thicker it would be, but 35 minutes of stirring pots stretched my level of patience, thank fuck for cell phones I say. I have added vanilla to coconut one and it is similar to the coconut yoghurt you can buy in the supermarket but has a slightly more zesty almost fizzy taste, I might add honey to some and see what happens to it then. Tonight I made this recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamami’s Jerusalem, a magnificent publication and defo a desert island cookbook, go get it. I reduced the quantities, substituted onion for the shallot and added a bit of pumpkin I had kicking around but here is their recipe. Oh and I was a bit too laz...