Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.
Due to the vagaries of the post between Ireland and New Zealand, my reading of the Observer Food Monthly is always a few weeks behind. Seeing as we’re never in season with the produce it doesn’t really matter and it’s always a red letter day when the most recent edition arrives, along with recipes and restaurant reviews torn from Irish publications – thanks again Mum!
Pies truly are a New Zealand classic. Maybe it’s because of the British influence and their Pork Pies, although colonisation of Ireland didn’t leave us with any such culinary heritage. As I mentioned the other day, pies are eaten by Kiwis on long road trips – the guarantee of a good pie will encourage people to take major detours – and they are apparently the traditional accompaniment to a rugby match.
Yesterday was the Boyfriend’s birthday so I decided to throw a small surprise birthday dinner. The plotting and planning for this has been going on for a couple of weeks but, after pondering various options, I only decided on what we were going to eat fairly late in the day. Eventually I decided on one of the Boyfriend’s favourites – the good old Kiwi meat pie.
Yesterday was the Boyfriend’s birthday so I decided to throw a small surprise birthday dinner. The plotting and planning for this has been going on for a couple of weeks but, after pondering various options, I only decided on what we were going to eat fairly late in the day. Eventually I decided on one of the Boyfriend’s favourites – the good old Kiwi meat pie.
After just putting up my own review of Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion a couple of days ago, I was delighted to see it featured in the Waitrose Food Illustrated Magazine’s top ten most useful cookery books.
One of the nicest meals out that I ever had with my family occurred in a small, unpromising, cellar-type Italian restaurant on the Douglas promenade in the Isle of Man about five years ago.
Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt and that has surely been the case with one of my trademark dishes – Lemon and Garlic Chicken. This is a dish that I have been cooking for years. It gets trotted out at regular intervals if friends are coming round for dinner and for many years it, and a variation on Apple Crumble, were my fail-safe dishes for those occasions.
Although fish has never been one of my favourite foods, this trip to New Zealand and the Kiwi dependence on fish and chips as a fast food while travelling is changing all that.
