Bibliocook - All About Food Blog

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Vegetable soup – take two

A weekend by the sea in autumn is the perfect time for soups. What better lunch, especially eaten by the fire as you gaze out the window at the rolling grey sea.

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One-pan dinners: Pan Couscous with Chorizo and Green Beans

Heading away for a long weekend to a bach (Kiwi for holiday home) by the sea tends to concentrate the mind when it comes to cooking. You know you’ll have to bring all your supplies with you, the local shop will probably be five miles down the road and that you’ll be having to cook on an unfamiliar cooker with unfamiliar, probably unwieldy, equipment.

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A mushroom hunt

One of my fondest autumn memories from childhood is of my siblings, my cousins and myself as small children, bundled up in warm coats and wellies (aka gumboots in NZ), being handed a couple of buckets by the adults and sent down my grandparents’ farm to go mushroom picking.

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Wonderful walnuts: Walnut Maple Tart

Walnuts in New Zealand are fantastic. Not only can you buy the boutique, high-quality nuts that are widely grown in this country – there’s even a Christchurch-based grower and processor that glories in the name A Cracker of a Nut – but even the imports are of a far better quality than we normally see in Ireland.

Winter warmers: Beef and Orange Stew 0

Winter warmers: Beef and Orange Stew

In New Zealand supermarkets I’ve been interested to see that there are stickers on all the pre-packed meat, saying whether that particular cut is good for grilling or stewing.

The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander 0

Day two: Savour New Zealand 2005

Another four Savour New Zealand classes down and we’re now at the end of what was truly a magnificent weekend. Today I started with A Well Seasoned Appetite (Darryl Maffey and Simon Gault), afterwards wandering into Cooking the Catch with Al Brown of Wellington’s Logan Brown restaurant.