Virgil Evetts

Apologies for what could be perceived as a somewhat morally-challenged title, but after nine months of self-induced sobriety, I’m really rather enjoying the pleasures of a tipple or two. But I wouldn’t want you to think I’m roaring-drunk and swinging from the rafters – actual inebriation has never really been my gig. My brain never really gets properly sozzled and ends being annoyed with drunken limbs. I do have a history of being savagely honest with people when in this state, which isn’t always wise or welcome.

No, all I mean is that I’m once again enjoying the way certain drinks complement food and, at least in my house, mark the division between night and day.  I don’t enjoy drinking during the day at all and have always kept pretty doggedly to an after-six routine.

When I finally got home the night Olive arrived, in an elated but frankly shattered state, I somehow managed to cook a meal  and then poured myself a stiff grappa. This is one of the few hard drinks I really like, and it most certainly helped to settle my wildly buzzing head and send me off to sleep. It was very welcome and very lovely.

My best beloved after the birth craved not a glass of Veuve or Moet, but a sip of crisp and fruity new season’s sauvignon blanc, her very favourite wine. In the interests of our wee whelpling, she allowed herself only the tiniest sip, but along with the Kikorangi, Kakariki Brie, smoked salmon, salami and other formerly forbidden foods I laid on, it felt like a very personal ceremony to both of us.

Apart from the shop-bought drinks now back on my menu, I have also been rediscovery my various homemade concoctions, which have been gathering dust and quietly aging in my cool, dark garage.

My 2009 vintage apple wine, made from my own Braeburns, is drinking very well. Dry as a desert wind with a subtle fruity flavour and an almost oily ‘mouth feel’, reminiscent of a good gewürztraminer. My Braeburn tree is somewhat biennial in its fruiting habits and produced such a meagre crop last year that I didn’t bother with winemaking. It should be back on top for 2010 though, which will mean about another 30 litres of this very drinkable drop.

Whilst cleaning out the pantry the other day I also stumbled upon a large preserving jar of damson plums steeping in 80% proof alcohol, forgotten for a couple of years. I strained off the dark red elixir and diluted it to a safe level with strong sugar syrup. The resulting damson liqueur is quite magnificent – richly plumy with a strong note of almond. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

As a look out the window right now I see that I might have just enough lemons to make a small batch of limoncello for summer. Summer really isn’t the same without this yolk-yellow drink poured ice cold and syrupy from the freezer.

Time to fire up the still methinks…

Summerfields

We have a fantastic next door neighbour. We hang out at each other’s houses from time to time, we BBQ, and we occasionally brew beer. We have named our brew ‘Summerstiejn’ (a portmanteu of our last names).  It was one night while we were sitting around enjoying the fruits of  our brewing labour that we got talking about cheese. You see, we’ve always had a hankering to make some. How hard can it be? It turns out that Lenny has also had a hankering to make some cheese, and being Dutch, he has the right heritage and all! So we decided to give it a go. It would be rude not to make a Dutch cheese and because (according to Lenny) Gouda isn’t a very nice place, we settled on Leiden. We got a pile of books out of the library and read up on a few recipes. This is where we hit our first snag. All the recipes were different! Some  of them were incredibly complicated, specifying the pressure the  cheese needed to be pressed at (40lbs for 12 hours, turn the cheese  and press for another 12 hours at 50lbs sort of stuff). Some of them just said “press the cheese overnight”. About the only thing that was consistent was the temperatures and I think this had more to do with not killing the helpful bacteria. We eventually settled on a middle- of-the-road approach. First we had to order the special cheese bacteria from these [http:// www.cottagecrafts.co.nz/] guys. Some of the more simple cheeses don’t need a culture, but we needed it to make our cheese taste like gouda  (sorry, leiden). The culture isn’t too expensive, and you get enough to treat 100 litres of milk! The culture is called Flora Danica and it’s a cocktail of specific helpful bacteria. The next step was the milk. I know there is probably something wonderful about making cheese with milk fresh from the cow, purchased at a farm gate from a ruddy-cheeked farmer, but we’re urban cheesemakers, so we did what urban people do to get food. We bought ours from the supermarket—homogenised, 6 litres. Now comes the actual cheese-making bit. Making cheese takes months,  but almost all of it is waiting. The first bit is where all the hard work is (and, to be honest, most of that is waiting too!).

We heated the milk in a water bath to 32ºC and added our Flora  Danica. We left it to sit for 30mins or so so the bacteria could de- freeze dry themselves and set to work turning the lactose in the milk into acid. Then we added some rennet—an enzyme that causes the milk to set like a giant white jelly. The curds get cut with a knife into 1cm cubes. This causes the milk to split into curds and whey. There is a phenomenal amount of whey released once you cut the curds up. Following this was the tedious and slightly stressful process of ‘washing the curds’. This technique is important for the style of cheese we were making. You have to drain off a 1/3 of the whey, and replace it with warm water, trying to bring the temperature slowly up  from 34ºC to 38ºC over half an hour or so. If you go too far then you  kill all the bacteria, and cook your curds. This was easily the hardest bit, and I’m sure it just takes a bit of practice (and it wasn’t THAT hard really).Once the curds were washed we strained them into a cheese-cloth lined colander and then packed them into some dinky wee gouda moulds we bought from trademe. Lenny had made a cheese press out of bits of timber with two huge Frankenstein bolts on the top, so we loaded the moulds into the press and cranked up the pressure. Light pressure for  10 minutes or so, then you turn the cheese over and press again with slightly more pressure. Whey pours out of them at first, then slows to a trickle, then drips. We pushed the pressure up quite high and left them overnight. In the morning we had two perfect little wheels of leiden cheese.  They went into a 20% brine solution for a few hours to start the rind  forming, and to get some flavour into them. From here they go into  the butter conditioner in the fridge to mature. It needs to be warmer  than the fridge (about 10ºC) and reasonably high humidity (put a  glass of water in there too).They can be eaten any time after about 3–4 weeks, but if we can wait,  they’ll be best after 3 months or so. Making cheese means you’re  playing the long game! We have named our cheese Arkefield—the  opposite portmanteu of our names, and a much better name for cheese. At the end of our cheese adventure we discovered that making it is  NOT hard. It’s actually pretty easy. In fact, we had started right in  at the medium level. There are cheeses that are a lot easier to make  than the lieden. If you want to get started grab a book from the  library, some rennet, some milk and get cracking!

Cheers

Karl & Fiona Summerfield

Summerfields Foods

207 Waimairi Road, Ilam, Christchurch

open 11am-7pm Tues – Sat

enquiries@summerfieldsfoods.co.nz

ph 03 357 0067

summerfieldsfoods.co.nz

Pete’s Natural Lemonade is produced in sunny Nelson and is an ALL NATURAL soft drink. Pete’s are very proud that their lemonade, really tastes homemade. They do not use ANY additives, preservatives, artificial flavours, colours or any other chemicals, only the good stuff:  lightly sparkling water, freshly squeezed New Zealand lemon juice, organic sugar and natural flavourings.

Every bottle of Pete’s lemonade has more freshly squeezed lemons than sugar, in fact about 25 – 30 % less sugar than  other fizzy drinks, making it a good alternative for children.

We have 4 prize packs of Pete’s Lemonade to give away in September.

To enter the draw email helen@foodlovers.co.nz with ‘Pete’s’ in the subject line

Competition closes October 2,2010

Available to Foodlovers members only.

Win Simon Gault’s book Nourish and a Simple Pleasures prize-pack in association with Mainland Butter.

To be in the draw to win visit www.asimplepleasure.co.nz  and find the answer the following question:

What does Simon Gault serve with one of New Zealand’s favourite fish?  Snapper topped with…

Email helen@foodlovers.co.nz with your answer in the subject line.

Competition closes October 2, 2010

Available to Foodlovers memebers only.

Ingredients

• 225g butter,softened
• 70g icing sugar
• 275g plain flour
• 200g sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten together
• 20g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• zest of 2 lemons
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• icing sugar for dusting

Method

Preheat oven to 170 C.

Beat the butter and sugar until pale and creamy, either with a cake mixer or in the food processor. Mix in the flour.

Press dough into a 20x 30 cm slice pan.

Bake for 15 minutes then remove from the oven. While the base is cooling, make the topping.

Beat the sugar and eggs until pale and creamy,  flour, baking powder, lemon rind and lemon juice. Mix together.

Pour the mixture on top of the base, then return it to the oven and bake for a further 30-35min, or until golden in colour and firmish to the touch.

Cool in the tin, then dust with icing sugar and cut into squares. Transfer to an airtight container when cool.

Disclaimer:

The recipe above has been supplied by a member of the public and has not been individually tested by Helen Jackson. Helen Jackson does not accept any liability in relation to publication of this recipe.

[homepageimage][/homepageimage]

[smallimage][/smallimage]

Serve with good quality icecream. I like to use ginger or coconut flavour if I can find it.

Ingredients

• 28 cm shortcrust pie shell, just baked
• 6 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups caster sugar
• 1/4 cup lime (or lemon) juice
• finely grated rind of 2 limes (or lemon)
• 1 cup cream

Method

Preheat oven to 160 C
Whisk together eggs and sugar until well incorporated. Mix in juice and grated rind along with cream.
pour into pastry shell and bake for 30 minutes or until just set.
Remove from oven and allow to cool before cutting into slices.

[homepageimage][/homepageimage]

[smallimage][/smallimage]

• 1/2 cup lemon juice and finely grated rind of 2 lemons
• 100g unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 eggs, lightly whisked

Method

 Combine lemon juice, rind, butter and sugar in a saucepan and stir over heat to dissolve sugar. Add eggs and continue to cook over a gentle heat stirring constantly until the mixture reaches the boil and thickens.
Pour mixture into a hot sterilised jar, cover and refrigerate.

[homepage][/homepage]

[smallimage][/smallimage]

1/2 cup (70g)  brazil nuts
1/2 cup (approx 70g) macadamia or hazelnuts
1/2 packet (125g) sweet biscuits
1 cup chopped pink and white marshmallows
1/4 cup roughly chopped dried apricots
2 teaspoons finely grated orange rind
250 g dark chocolate
25 g butter
200 g (1/2 can)  sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 180 C and toast nuts for 10 minutes. Cool and chop roughly.
Place bicsuits in the bowl of a food processor and process until roughly chopped.
Combine the nuts, biscuits, marshmallows, apricots, and orange rind in a bowl.

Gently melt the chocolate with the butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water or in the microwave on a low heat.
Sitr in the condensed milk and then mix with the biscuit mixture.

Press into a 18cm x 30cm lined slice pan.  Refrigerate until set and then cut into bars.

[homepage][/homepage]

[smallimage][/smallimage]

I’ve always said that my blind terror of hospital food is what keeps me healthy. All that overcooked cabbage. But to be fair to the much-maligned kitchens for the poorly, it’s been a few years since I’ve spent much time around hospitals. The punctual arrival of my impossibly perfect first-born last week saw me loitering in the wards though numerous dinner services, so I took some time out from my new vocation of full time Baby Adorer to sniff, prod, taste and photograph whatever turned up on the dinner trolley. And found I had to eat my words. Perhaps hospital food has improved, or maybe I’ve just grown up a little, or maybe I was too distracted and tired to form a reliable opinion; but, with the exception of a rather pungent fish and potato carry-on, everything served to my best beloved was actually pretty good, relatively speaking. That is to say that it was  basic food with a distinctly down-country kiwi vibe. The sort of stuff my paternal grandparents churned out really. Nourishing, tasty and not terribly imaginative. I suppose this pretty much covers the home cooking of a great many New Zealanders anyway. So if hospital food is supposed to be easy on your system and vaguely comforting it’s doing pretty well these days.

There were a few peculiarities along the way- such as the chicken pie which lacked pastry and, a pervasive aroma of ill-treated cabbages, even when said brassicas were absent from the plate. But as I say all in all decent, tolerable Nana food.

Night 1- Entrée Olive

I didn’t manage to photograph diner on the first night as I was still all aquiver about the arrival of baby Olive (actually still quivering right now), but  I couldn’t help but notice its ‘aroma’. The dish consisted of aggressively-fishy-smelling steamed fish, served on mashed potatoes with a ‘white sauce’- whatever that may be in the hospital catering lexicon. My best beloved was still drugged up to her eyeballs, and emotionally and physically exhausted, and couldn’t be tempted by its rank odour. A funny choice for the post-op appetite, but I suppose it would have been easily digestible, if not very  palatable.

Night 2- Little lamb

Next night things were much better- a quite passable lamb ragout. It was a bit too tomatoey for my liking, but was otherwise a well executed dish. The lamb was tender, very lean and flavoursome. The accompanying beans, carrots, parsnips and potato were a little overcooked, but otherwise inoffensive.

Night 3 – Through the mincer

A sort of beef-mince stew. Basically just mince, onions, a little stock and seasoning. This would have been well suited to mince on toast, and I rather liked it despite myself. More watery vegetables in attendance, but the cauliflower was at least still white.

Night 4- Better than the buffet

Dinner on the fourth night was by far my favourite. Roast beef with broccoli, kumara and mashed potatoes. Of the later  trio the there is nought much to say. They filled a gap.  But the beef was excellent- tender, flavoursome and lean. The gravy was of that guilty pleasure instant kind. Who knows what was in it, who cares? But it was quite delicious.  This meal was quite a bit better than the carvery offerings from the average wedding buffet. Not that that’s any great pedigree. Horrible affairs, weddings.

 Night 5- Pie Lie

Dinner on our last night (well their last night, I wasn’t allowed to stay over) was the rather peculiar aforementioned sans-pastry chicken pie. Perfectly nice if you thought of it as a creamy stew but deeply disappointing as a pie. I’m largely of the opinion that pies fillings are vehicles for lovely crispy pastry. Not the other way around.

Befores and Afters

The desserts offered each night were for the most part a series of very pleasant surprises. Think old fashioned steamed puddings, custard, and ice cream and in one case a truly outstanding orange flavoured blancmange.  The later is more than little mysterious as blancmange is usually unspeakably horrid.

Lunches and breakfast throughout our stay were of the predictable but adequate kind. Toast and cereal, filled rolls, sandwiches and soups. Unremarkable but it’s hospital food after all and could certainly be a lot worse.

So to those of you destined for a stay in a public hospital anytime soon, fear not (much). The food really isn’t bad. It’s not fine dining, but nor should it be. When we are feeling off colour and vulnerable we want basic, familiar food. What I saw and tasted during our stay in the excellent maternity ward of North Shore Hospital achieved just that. The only real downside to public hospitals (apart from the obligatory illness, incisions etc) is the public.

Finally – thank you all for your kind wishes and comments about our very happy arrival last week. So far Olive is proving to be the best kind of baby. She eats like a horse (on a liquid diet), sleeps well and rarely cries. She smiles endlessly but I’m told this all just wind. Of course it’s early days and might make her presence more assertively felt, but either way we are, and will be, hugely happy!

Serves 4

Prep 15 minutes, plus freezing

115g Billington’s Molasses Sugar
50g cocoa powder
100g good-quality dark chocolate, roughly chopped

1 Put the Molasses sugar, cocoa powder and 600ml water into a saucepan, and then bring to the boil, stirring occasionally to prevent the sugar sticking. Simmer for 5 mins.

2 Take off the heat, and then add the chocolate. Stir until the chocolate has melted, then leave the mixture to cool.

3 Pour into an ice-cream maker and churn until frozen, or place in a freezer proof container and freeze. Whisk after 45 minutes with a fork to break up the ice crystals. Repeat 3 times then freeze for at least 6 hours.

 4 Remove from the freezer 15 minutes before serving to soften.

[homepage][/homepage]

[smallimage][/smallimage]