Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.
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.
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.
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.
One day down but one more to go – will I be still standing at the end of it? Yesterday was the first day of Savour New Zealand and it had to be experienced to be believed.
Earlier today I discovered that Patricia Wells, the American-born Paris and Provence dweller, has won a James Beard award, in the International category, for her Provence Cookbook.
We were having five people over for dinner on Saturday night and, as I was digging through the cookbooks looking for inspiration, the boyfriend asked if I had ever cooked an Indian curry from first principles. Well, with a challenge like that it didn’t take me too long to dig out a few recipes that I’d been wanting to try for a while.
The countdown is nearly over and this Friday sees the opening of the Christchurch based Savour New Zealand foodies masterclass – by NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark, no less. I can’t imagine her Irish counterpart, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, opening such a thing in Ireland unless, of course, it was a pub in Drumcondra and there was a pint of Guinness in it for him.
It’s feijoa season! And what, you may ask, are feijoas? The first time I saw apple and feijoa juice for sale, not long after I arrived in New Zealand, I had no idea what it was.
