Bibliocook - All About Food Blog

Yoga – and Pumpkin Pie 0

Do / Living in New Zealand

Yoga – and Pumpkin Pie

Govinda’s in Dublin – a vegetarian restaurant run by the Hare Krishnas – has a great reputation and was one of those places that I always intended to go for dinner. Somehow I never managed to make it there but, when I was searching for a yoga class in Christchurch lately, I discovered that they run them in the Christchurch branch of Govinda’s. not only that but, for $15 you get an hour’s yoga plus your dinner. How could such an offer be turned down? Last week I tried the class and I think I’ll be returning every week for the food, as well as for the yoga. After working hard for an hour, the delicious meal is truly well deserved.

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Cook

The simple things in life: Pea and Ham Soup

As it’s winter at this side of the world – although the temperatures seem to have taken a turn for the better lately – I’ve been cooking lots of soups. I love making anything that just takes 20 minutes of chopping and frying, and then is happy to sit simmering on the cooker for an hour or longer, until it’s done. As a result of my interest in dried peas, beans and lentils, there’s always a cupboard full of various legumes to be incorporated into soup and one of the best soups around can be made with dried green split peas.

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Cookery Books / Read

Bill's Open Kitchen by Bill Granger ***

Australian cook Bill Granger is the darling of the Sydney restaurant scene. He open his first café, Bill’s, twelve years ago and hasn’t looked back since. Earlier this month he opened his third Sydney...

All things chocolate (beer) 6

Do / Living in New Zealand

All things chocolate (beer)

Beer drinkers, as wine drinkers, are pretty well catered for in New Zealand. There are plenty of microbreweries and brew pubs about – Brew Moon, the Dux de Lux and the Twisted Hop are amongst some Canterbury favourites – but even the big breweries have pretty decent beers. One of the biggies is Speight’s Brewery. Known as “The Pride of the South”, it is based in Dunedin and produces a very tasty dark beer called, in an obvious move, Old Dark.

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Storecupboard Specials

Peas, beans, lentils and other useful things

I’ve always been a lover of peas, beans and lentils – things that are cheap and can be turned into something delicious without too much effort. But, in Ireland, a hectic schedule prevented me from really getting involved with these in their dried form. Instead I had to content myself with their tinned equivalents which, although not hugely expensive, do prevent you from using them with too much abandon. Since coming to New Zealand, however, and discovering that dried peas, beans and lentils are readily available through the Bin Inn chain and also through the self-serve bins in all supermarkets, I’ve been putting them to good use.

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Cookery Books / Read

Comfort Food: Eating for Pleasure by Maxine Clark ****

Now this cookbook is right up my alley. The combination of the words comfort, food, eating and pleasure – especially in winter – talk far more to me that those hated phrases low fat, slimline and reduced calories. Which isn’t to say that comfort food is going to have a drastic effect on your waistline, although it might! It’s just that the whole idea of comfort food which, by nature, involves things hated by the health police such as full fat milk, real butter and clotted cream, is especially evocative in the winter. With cold and rain outside (here in New Zealand), now is the perfect time to stay indoors, browse through cookery books and decide what tasty treat to cook for dinner tonight. You Northern Hemispherians will have some time to wait but there’s no harm in getting ready in advance for dismal, dreary weather.

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Bake / Storecupboard Specials

Chocolate and chilli: Mexican Hot Chocolate

Ibarra Mexican Chocolate I think that my interest in the Mexican combination of chocolate and chilli may have been originally sparked from watching the film adaptation of Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate in college. The fire of chilli and the dark richness of chocolate seems, to me, to be a rather good combination. The Chocolate and Chilli Biscotti I picked up recently to accompany my flat white (coffee) at the Underground Coffee Company Café in Christchurch was a good example of this and put my mind musing over other ways I could use chocolate and chilli together.