Good Eating in NZ

Chinese Tea Eggs for Easter Monday

2011-04-25T11:30:00.000+12:00

If you're looking for something to do on the last day of Easter, try these fun, family-friendly, healthy, and attractive tea eggs.

After seeing a post on TasteSpotting, I decided on a whim to make Chinese tea eggs for our family lunch on Easter Sunday. Though appropriate for an everyday snack, these tea eggs are novel enough (in New Zealand!), and decorative enough, to be perfect for this eggy Anglo holiday.* (Their spiderweb design would also make them great for Halloween, but one season at a time.)

The many recipes I saw online agreed largely on the spices I should use, but had a large variation in cooking times. These ranged from pre-boiling the eggs for 2 minutes and simmering for 20, to pre-boiling for 20 and simmering for several hours. So, instead of anxiously fretting about which recipe was 'right', I figured that it probably did not matter too much how long I cooked them for.

The method for making tea eggs is to hard boil eggs, crack the shell with the back of a teaspoon, return to simmer with black tea, star anise, cinnamon, szechuan peppercorns, soy sauce, tangerine or mandarin zest, and a bit of sugar, and leave to steep overnight to develop dark, intricate patterns over the hard boiled eggs.

As it was getting towards bed time on Saturday night already, I made a start.

Chinese Tea Eggs

Ingredients:

4 - 6 eggs (I started making four, before realizing I had miscounted potential lunch attendees and hastily boiling up another - which in the end was not required.)

2 star anise pods
2 T black tea (I used ginger infused tea)
2 T gluten-free tamari (or, if you can, 1T soy sauce and 1T dark soy sauce, which will probably give a deeper flavour)
1 T black peppercorns (or szechuan peppercorns if you have them)
1 t brown sugar
1/2 t cinnamon (or a whole piece of cinnamon bark if you have one)
tangerine or mandarin zest (which I didn't have, so I left out)

Method:

Place eggs in a small to medium pot, and cover with cold water.

Bring to the boil and simmer for up to ten minutes.

Retaining boiling water, remove eggs and rinse under cold water, until cool enough to handle. Don't skip this step, especially if you're about to hand the eggs over to young children to crack!

With the back of a teaspoon, crack the shells of the eggs, without removing the shell - this will create your spiderweb patterns on the eggs.

Return the eggs to the water, with the other ingredients, and simmer for about an hour. Watch to make sure your pot doesn't boil dry, though - add more water if necessary.

Remove from the heat, cover, and let steep overnight, or for as many hours as you can allow.

Eat cold by itself or with your condiment of choice. These have a very mild, savoury flavour.

We served the tea eggs as part of a delicious lunch spread that my mum, sister, and I pulled together with little to no planning, including inventing a recipe for corn and oat patties - yum!

I didn't actually write down the recipe - we were really just throwing stuff in until it felt right. They contained: a (~400g) can of creamed corn; 2 eggs; about a teaspoon of baking powder; about a quarter cup of corn meal, and probably about one and a half cups of oat flour - I ground two cups of rolled oats, then used not quite all of that. Also pepper and salt. The 'batter' was quite wet and soft, and we spooned it into the frypan, but once fried the bottom was crispy and held together.

I love taking picture's with the back yard in the background. Oh the childhood memories!

All in all, a great Easter lunch!

~~~

* with the exception of a pack of lindt peanut butter eggs a month or so before Easter, we haven't bought any Easter eggs this year. This is only because after that first packet, we couldn't find any more of those delicious delicious peanut butter eggs.

Mushrooms and other visitors

2011-03-24T17:28:00.002+13:00

After a few days of rain, today was beautifully sunny, so I opened the door to the deck to let some light and air in. Being outside prompted me to water the raspberry plant given to me by a colleague. I'm pretty bad at remembering to water the plant, but I'll pretend that the reason I haven't recently is because of the rain rather than neglect.

Happily, I noticed that the raspberry had some new growth amongst the dead leaves. I pulled out a few weeds that had shot up, but then noticed something strange.

Fungus-y visitor to the raspberry planter.

There were some weird mushroomy things around the plant.

Mushrooms! Wonder if they are edible...

Quite a few of them.

So many mushrooms...

Most of them were clustered near the base of the raspberry, so I suspect they came with the plants when I transplanted them. There's nothing in any of the other pot plants on the deck, so I don't think spores were just floating in the air... I asked my colleague about them, but she hadn't seen them before at her place (the source of the raspberry). She thought that perhaps they had laid dormant in Bulls where she lives, and only grew with all the rain we have in Wellington.

I have no idea what they are, if they are edible or not, or whether I should pull them out ASAP before they spread and poison any raspberries that try to grow despite my maltreatment. Happy to hear any ideas if there are any fungus experts reading my blog ;)

Speaking of unusual visitors to my deck (yes, the mushrooms are 'visiting'), we had another yesterday, napping for a couple of hours under our table. I would have gone out for a snuggle if I weren't allergic, and/or if I hadn't already tried to make friends but found him/her on the timid side...:

Furry visitor under our deck furniture.

Vegan Dark Chocolate Mousse

2011-03-14T18:13:00.009+13:00

Vegan Chocolate Mousse - with what I call "midnight snack" lighting... ^_^

One of my favourite time ~~wasters~~ fillers is to browse through TasteSpotting, 'starring' recipes that I want to adapt or try to make. Recently, there was a yummy-looking post for chocolate mousse made with silken tofu. Despite an interest in vegan cooking, I'd never really used silken tofu in desserts before. I usually use firm tofu in stir fries, and once used silken tofu in place of paneer in a curry, but never as a dairy alternative in desserts...

The recipe looked easy, was described as decadent and 'you would never know there's tofu in it', and would meet my recent craving for dessert, but with fewer unnecessary calories... However, it must be warned that this is not for the mild sweet tooth - this is probably the richest chocolate mousse I have ever had in the sense of chocolatey sweetness. You could tone it down a notch by leaving out some of the additional cocoa and sugar, and I don't think it would suffer for it. I served mine with banana, which actually cut through the sweetness!

The recipe I was following is here. I made a few minor adaptations to the recipe to suit what I had on hand, and translated to metric. Here's my version:

Spoon full of chocolate...

Vegan Dark Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients

300g silken tofu
100g dark chocolate (I used 80% - check chocolate is dairy free)
1/4 c cocoa powder
1/4 c water
1 Tbsp rice milk (or other non dairy milk)
2 Tbsp butterscotch schnapps*
1/2 c sugar

* actually I assume this is vegan! The prenzel website doesn't say (link). I used this instead of port or brandy, so use whatever you are comfortable with.

Instructions

Blend silken tofu in a food processor or blender until completely smooth.

In a bowl on top of a pot of barely simmering water, mix chocolate, cocoa, water, milk, and schnapps, and stir until the chocolate has completely melted.

Remove from heat and add the sugar. Mix until smooth and sugar has dissolved.

Pour or spoon into serving bowls, and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

Serve with your choice of chopped fruit, vegan cream, as is, or whatever tickles your fancy.

Try not to fall into a sugar coma :)

A Journey in Waffles

2011-03-12T13:14:00.007+13:00

Waffles. Love 'em or hate 'em... Just kidding, I'm not going to start off like that, though my personal waffle history is one of both love and hate.

My family was never a waffle family. Waffles seem to be a particularly American thing: wikipedia support this view. For cooked breakfasts, we would have varieties on pancakes. Thin crepes with lemon juice and brown sugar, golden syrup or treacle, or, occasionally, maple syrup. Pikelets with butter, honey, or whipped cream and jam. The closest we had to waffles as children would have been from the Dutch side my my family: Stroopwafels, or "stroopies" as we called them. And they're not really waffles - they're biscuits.

I was first exposed to waffles as a teenager, when after sleeping over at a friend’s house she pulled out a waffle iron and whipped up a batch. I was fascinated by the waffle-making contraption, and it's fancy pattern (Scandinavian heart shaped waffles, from memory). They seemed easier and so much more exciting than pancakes. But not having waffles in my blood, I soon forgot about their exotic allure.

Flash forward about ten years, when I bought a 3-in-1 toasted sandwich maker, waffle iron, and grill. I only needed a toastie-maker, but this one was cheap! And multi-functional! I eventually remembered my initial excitement for waffles, and though disappointed that my waffle iron was in the relatively boring Belgian style, I decided to try to make waffles for myself.

I chose a recipe from the instruction manual: there were a few, but the one I chose was of an unleavened 'thin and crispy' variety. It looked simple, a good place to start. The recipe included cream. That made it sound fancy, and 'special'. But, I found it bland in texture, and far too rich and heavy in fat for my tastes. I should have expected it - I could never eat cream without feeling ill. Entirely unimpressed, I packed the waffle-iron plates away and stuck to toasted sandwiches.

Flash forward again - perhaps 5 years and a switch to gluten-free - to this week. I was flipping through the Healthy Food Guide looking for menu plan ideas, and came across a recipe for gluten-free waffles. The idea lingered in my mind: Waffles! I made them for brunch the next day.

As with my first cream-laden attempt, I should have known by looking at this recipe that they would be no good. My limited experience with gluten-free flour blends should have tipped me off to the idea that three ingredients alone - white rice flour, water/milk, and salt - would not make a good waffle. I thought at least that a waffle recipe should have eggs or baking powder in it - but I’ve never successfully made waffles, so how would I know?

As soon as I stirred the mix, I knew it was a mistake. The batter was pure white, as starchy mixes are, and the texture was too smooth. I persevered, but what came out of the waffle-maker was a thick, solid, unappetising gum. I ate it. Why? I was hungry, and my very last effort had gone into making those waffles. It was my penance for not recognising a bad recipe. I hate to waste food.

Bad Waffles

The offending waffles. I won't replicate the recipe here, for obvious reasons. While it's great that the Healthy Food Guide are starting to recognise and cater for people who eat gluten-free, I have given them honest feedback on this specific recipe.

Luckily, the internet is a wonderful resource for gluten-free eating, and a quick search brought up more options that looked much more promising. This morning I rolled up my sleeves, put on a my flour-dusted apron, and got to the business of making a decent waffle.

I settled on a recipe from Gluten Free Cooking School. I needed a recipe using flours that I had in my pantry, and though many good gluten-free recipes I see from the US contain sorghum and teff flour, I have never seen these in New Zealand. I follow the Gluten Free Cooking School blog, so I trusted that this recipe would be pretty good. Also, it looked right.

Good Waffles

Here is a link to the original recipe: Gluten Free Waffles. Despite having all the ingredients in general, I didn't quite have the right amounts, so tinkered with the recipe to suit: mostly the flour mix used. My version is published below.

If you have access to 'fancy' flours, you could also try these tempting recipes:

Gluten-free Girl's Waffles
Cinnamon Mochi Waffles on the Daily Dietribe

Gluten Free Waffles

Makes about 7 waffles.

Gluten Free Flour Mix

1 part brown rice flour
1 part ground millet
1 part white rice flour
2 parts corn starch
1 part fine cornmeal
2 parts soy flour
1 part masa de mais (masa harina)

If you treat each 'part' as a quarter cup, you will have about a half-cup more flour mix than you need for this recipe.

Gluten Free Cooking School's original all-purpose flour blend is here, if you prefer. As I only had 1/4 cup of brown rice flour, the ground millet and white rice flour were added as substitutes. Cornmeal substituted some of the corn starch (cornflour in NZ), just in case the white rice flour had increased the starch content too much. I assumed that my masa de mais (for corn tortillas) was masa harina, but you never know.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups gluten free flour mix
1 Tbsp* gluten free baking powder
1 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt

3 eggs
1 1/2 cups dairy or non-dairy milk
70 g butter, melted*
1/2 cup canola oil

Canola oil spray, for waffle iron.

* In New Zealand, a tablespoon is 15ml, though I understand that elsewhere it is 20ml. I don't think it matters in this case.

* The original recipe called for 230 g butter, and no oil. I only had 70 g butter, and when used oil to top-up I realised that this is a LOT of fat: feel free to use much less butter and/or oil to taste. I would recommend perhaps 1/2 cup / 100 g fat if you want a tasty but slightly lighter version. Also, I am constantly using this butter converter, because butter should be measured in grams, not tablespoons or sticks or cups, thankyouverymuch!

Instructions

Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Whisk eggs until frothy, and mix in milk.

Add melted butter and oil slowly and whisk.

Add wet ingredients to dry, and mix until large lumps are gone.

Heat waffle iron, and spray with a bit of canola oil to prevent sticking.

Pour about a half cup of batter into the waffle iron (adapt to size of iron).

Cook to the instructions of your waffle iron, or by instinct if you prefer.

When cooked, serve hot with your choice of delicious toppings. I had mine with banana and maple syrup, and a bit of cinnamon sugar. They were divine - soft, fluffy, tasty, crispy on the outside.

Topped Waffles

Fluffy Waffles

As this recipe made heaps of waffles, I froze some for Ron. You know - 'ron - Later'on - Well my dad used to say this and I alwasy thought it was hilarious, and apparently still do.

To freeze waffles, cool first on a wire rack, separate each waffle with a piece of wax paper, and freeze in freezer bags. Apparently, these heat well in the toaster for a super-quick breakfast.

Waffles for 'Ron

Holey Waffles

Waffles to Freeze

And on that note, stay safe, well, and happy. In New Zealand, we're still reeling from the February 22 quake in Christchurch, so our thoughts are with those in Japan and the Pacific affected by yesterday's 8.9 earthquake and subsequent tsunamis.

Surreptitious return

2011-03-03T21:26:00.008+13:00

While this blog might have looked like it's been dead for some time, it has often been on my mind, and I've been waiting for the right time and motivation to resurrect it.

It turns out that the longer you leave something, the more daunting a task it seems to be. The decisions to make! What can I post about? Do I make some explanation for my long absence, or do I jut get back into it and hope no one notices I stopped for a year and a half? The worries! Will I have any (of my admittedly very few) readers left? Will I just make one post and disappear again forever?

I don't have answers to any of those questions, so I will just get on with it. Since everyone likes pictures, here is a pictorial summary of my last few years in food:

1. Enchiladas, 2. Peanut Macaroon, 3. Making Crème Brulée, 4. Crème Brulée, 5. Blind baking pie crust, 6. Two Pies, 7. Two Pieces of Two Pies, 8. Lemon Sago, 9. Mixed Grain Risotto, 10. Making Banana Ice-Coconut-Cream, 11. Making Peanut Butter Cookies, 12. Peanut Butter Cookies, 13. Banana Ice-Coconut-Cream, 14. Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles, 15. Thumbprint Cookies, 16. Peanut Brownies, 17. Tomato Salad, 18. Cunt Cupcake, 19. Savoury Hotcakes, 20. Breast Cookies, 21. Breast Cookie, 22. Brownies with Options, 23. Vege Pad Thai, 24. Chocolate Pretzels, 25. Fun-Mirror Pots, 26. Galettes, 27. Fish and Fried Potato, 28. Spinach Egg Fried Rice, 29. Gluten Free Dutch Baby, 30. Unhealthy Snack Stack, 31. White on White on White, 32. Tempeh Simmering, 33. Grits, 34. Making Frittata, 35. Frittata Ingredients, 36. Frittata

Cookbook Case Study - Potato Pepper Bake - Food Legends of the World

2009-09-27T21:50:00.002+13:00

The second recipe I made from Food Legends of the World was Potato Pepper Bake. Essentially, this was scalloped potatoes with blue cheese, capsicum, and fresh herbs. I'm all for blue cheese, so I was into it...

The potato's legend comes from Peru, and tells of conflict between the people living on the plains, and those living in the Andean mountains. The people of the plains had grown strong on quinoa, and wishing for more land on which to grow their crops, they began stealing the food of the mountain-people in the hopes of starving them out. The mountain people prayed to their gods, and were answered when a great bird dropped large fleshy seeds form the sky, which the mountain people planted. However, the people from the plains stole these crops, too, before the berries on the plants were harvested. The great bird returned, telling them that the plains people had fallen for a trick taking the poisonous berries, and that they should dig the hidden crop of potatoes from the ground.

The mixture of chopped red capsicum, fresh herbs, and spring onions that goes between the layers of potato was delicious by itself. Here it is:

Tasty tasty foods. Tasty!

In a fit of laziness, I used frozen potato slices. (Also, our potatoes were soft and sprouting, and I'd just bought the newly released frozen pre-sliced potatoes, so it was quite lucky.) Here's a hint for working with frozen potato slices: don't put them on a wet chopping board if you want to be able to get them off again easily! Uh... how do I know? Oh, just a guess, I certainly didn't let them freeze onto the chopping board by mistake...

Frozen potato. Wet chopping board. Oops.

Product placement! These are like the first frozen potato product I've come across that wasn't battered for roasting. It's just potato! Perfect! Oh, I have no stake in this company and bought the product myself, blah blah. :)

I made half with blue cheese as called for, and the other half with feta, so I didn't have to inflict blue cheese on Neil. The feta was easier to crumble than the blue cheese, so probably not a bad alternative. Neil appreciated the swap, and though he was brave enough to try a bit with blue cheese just in case, he still didn't like it.

Potatoes, blue cheese, and feta.

Left half has feta. Right half has blue cheese. Bottom half has red pepper - though after I took the photo I sprinkled it over the whole lot ;)

Because I used frozen potatoes, and the instructions had only short cooking times listed, I baked them for 30 minutes rather than the 60 called for in the recipe (followed by 15 minutes without a cover to brown the dish). This worked a treat.

It didn't get particularly brown, but good anyways.

This was seriously tasty, I was more than impressed. I preferred the blue cheese to the feta - it had a smoky flavour while the feta half was strangely slightly sweet. This was also good as leftovers. It didn't serve 4-6 though - perhaps it would as a side to something else. We started off making it into four servings, then we polished off another half-serve each at the same meal. I had the final serve for lunch the next day, and was still slightly peckish afterwards.

Yum!

This will definitely be a make-again sort of dish! I'll have to think of a nice protein dish to pair it with, I think, to make the recipe go a little further.

Cookbook Case Study - Beans Tijuana - Food Legends of the World

2009-09-08T17:27:00.002+12:00

Here's a post that's been a long time coming!

The first recipe I tried from Food Legends of the World was... Beans Tijuana!

As I mentioned in my previous post (almost a month ago!), the book presents the legends of 25 ingredients and follows each with a recipe. My first recipe choice was based upon beans, and a Mayan legend is told.

A clever, virtuous man, finding himself in unfortunate circumstances, decides to make a deal with the Devil - trading seven wishes for his soul. His first six wishes are the predictable ones: his home, family, food; health; riches; friends; power; travel. His seventh wish, "one last whim", was to wash some black beans until they turned white. Once he had granted the final wish, keen to get his hands on the "full and luminous soul", the Devil saw that he had been tricked - no matter how much the man washed the black beans, they would not turn white. In order to prevent such trickery in the future, the devil demanded that there would also be beans of all different colours: white, yellow, green, brown, red... and so there are today.

Now for the cooking - Beans Tijuana

It's quite a simple recipe, calling for red beans, adzuki beans, and kidney beans, as well as onion, garlic, chilli, tomato, and other seasonings. I used adzuki and kidney beans - aren't red beans red kidney beans? Probably not, I don't know that much about beans, but that's okay.

Chilli!

The recipe called for four tablespoons of fresh chopped chillies (maybe four or five chillies), and then asked for another tablespoon of chilli powder and 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Both Neil and I thought that sounded like a lot, so debated putting in less chilli, but in the end decided to follow the recipe and see what would happen.

Onion before adding chilli

Onion after adding chilli! Yum!

No more photos... I guess I got distracted :)

Apart from a small spoon to check for cookedness, I didn't try it the night it was made (instead, I felt unwell and had plain rice with honey). Neil had some and said it was quite hot - and he does like things hotter than I do in general, so neither of us were sure I would be able to palate it!

It made a quite thin chilli - almost soup like. We've been serving it mixed with rice, which does well. I've frozen some and have found it good defrosted, too. I've also drained some and scooped it onto pizza (with leftover greens), which was actually pretty stunning. I wrote about that pizza already, here.

The beans were on the only just cooked side, though I think the freezer improved this. I had read previously that beans should not be cooked with anything acidic, else they would not soften. This recipe cooked the beans with lime and tomato, among other things, perhaps explaining the lack of cookedness?

As for the heat - It's much hotter than the last chilli I made, but luckily not too hot for me! It also has quite a nice tang to it. Due to its thinness, it would probably be best for an accompanying dish, like a spicy bean soup. Nice!

Niccolini's - Courtenay Place, Wellington

2009-09-04T19:25:00.003+12:00

We often ate at Niccolini's before I went gluten-free. I simply assumed that, being an Italian restaurant I'd be out of luck for eating there gluten-free. I did read somewhere that they did gluten-free dishes, and again assumed that this would be the non-pasta dishes like steak or fish - as the only two vegetarian dishes they offer are pasta.

Then, I read somewhere, that Niccolinis offer gluten-free pasta! But don't expect to just turn up and have it, like I did! If you wish to come for gluten-free pasta, order it the day before.

They do have other gluten-free offerings on the menu. When I mentioned that I was also vegetarian, the waiter went to see what the chef could do, and came back offering a mushroom risotto. They do a risotto special, but that wouldn't usually be vegetarian.

Neil ordered garlic bread, and remembered when it arrived that it was four pieces, usually plenty even shared between two. That's one thing I miss, their crispy buttery garlic bread. Oh well! I lived! And Neil managed to eat it all!

The risotto was good, tasty, but very creamy. Creamy as in with lots of cream. I don't really do well with creamy things, especially creamy pasta or risotto. I really struggled, especially near the end. In fact, I didn't finish it - by the end I was picking out the mushroom and trying to get the 'dryest' bits of rice out. While we had considered going out to a show afterwards, I just wanted to go home, my belly was quite sore. In fact, I almost think that the creamy risotto was worse for my stomach than glutenous pasta would have been (since I'm starting to think gluten is not the problem, rather, either stress, IBS, or some other mystery ingredient). But - they were accommodating for my requirements and I appreciated that.

Personally, I think putting cream in risotto is sort of cheating. Risotto is plenty creamy even without dairy if you make it well. The addition of a bit of parmesan if desired is fine to hold it all together, but cream is so unnecessary and to me lowers the quality of the meal! It must be a matter of taste, and since I don't have much dairy at all... it wasn't to mine.

But, I do like Nicollinis. Their menu is a mess, but the place has a nice feel, a painting (or print) of Vernazza (Cinque Terre) on the wall (which makes me feel cultured for having been to Cinque Terre!), and their food is generally pretty good. They're often packed, though. I would like to go there for gluten-free pasta one night! I know my option will be pasta puttanesca, but that's okay with me!

Hazel Restaurant - Marjoribanks St, Wellington

2009-08-30T20:47:00.004+12:00

It was some time ago now that we went to Hazel restaurant on Marjoribanks Street, Wellington.

The occasion was a celebration of my exams being over, and we wanted to try something new.

The restaurant itself was nice, small, and located in one of those neat villas that line lower Mount Vic streets.

The restaurant had no vegetarian entrées, which I failed to notice on the sample menu I'd checked out before we came. However, once I asked if they could do something for me, and after the slightly taken aback waitress went off to check with the chef, it transpired that they were able to do a half size of one of the four vegetarian mains. Two of these mains were gluten free, so I had a buffalo mozzarella and spiced pear salad as an entrée, and a pumpkin and goats feta risotto as a main.

The salad was light and very tasty. I'd never had buffalo mozzarella, and this was tender and soft. Perhaps softer than it should have been in the middle, but I don't know how it should have been, because I'd only had quite hard mozzarella from the supermarket in the past.

The risotto, too, was really tasty. Not too creamy, and with nice tangy feta, I was glad I'd chosen this as my main. If I recall correctly, that was also served with some spinach stirred through.

All very yummy. I had ice cream and sorbet for dessert - a very generous serving - perhaps a bit too much, in fact. Two balls of icecream and two of sorbet, stacked on a plate.

Overall, a good meal out. The atmosphere was good, after getting over the initial apparent resistance of the waitress to provide me with something I could eat. It seemed strange to me to offer so many vegetarian options (four is a lot for that kind of restaurant!), but nothing on the entrée menu! Anyway... The food was definitely up there, though the desserts were slightly less exciting for some reason. Still, recommended for a meal out, and accommodating for gluten-free folk - even when vegetarian!

Instant Polenta is the new couscous

2009-08-25T18:52:00.002+12:00

Instant polenta is the new couscous.

Back about a year ago, I was eating a lot of couscous. This was just before I cut gluten out of my diet. It was the ultimate easy lunch food - pour boiling water over it and stand while you heat up some baked beans.

I was a bit sad to lose that particular convenience.

I don't believe it took me so long to try instant polenta. I'd made polenta a few times from scratch, but stirring for 20 minutes is at the upper end of intensive for me. Recently, as in within the last week, I bought some instant polenta and gave it a go.

I didn't expect it to be so easy. Pour into boiling water with some seasonings, and stir until thick - about 3 minutes. Pour onto a plate to set. I could make this at work!!! It's ridiculous!

Instant Polenta

1 c water
62.5 g instant polenta
dash of salt

smoked herb salt mix (or other favourite seasoning)
fancy extra virgin olive oil

Boil the water and put in a pot (or boil it in the pot!). Pour instant polenta into the pot, stirring as you do so. Add the salt. Keep stirring until thick. Pour or spread onto a plate and let set.

Sprinkle seasoned salt liberally over the top, and drizzle with some nice olive oil. You could eat it as is, look at it:

Instant polenta with smoked salt and olive oil

I served this one a few days ago with fried eggs on top. Today I had it with baked beans, in a fit of too-lazy-to-cook, and with a nod back to my baked beans on couscous days.

Cobar Restaurant

2009-08-21T18:49:00.001+12:00

While my menu plan had us eating leftovers that night, I thought it would be nice to go out to eat to make use of Neil's 'new' car that he'd picked up that day. After calling a couple of places to scope out options, I booked at Cobar in Day's Bay.

Excellent service. Not busy at all - suspect they would be in summer. They made me an entrée salad that was apparently new to the menu with a blue cheese cream that was seriously tasty. The vegetables were baby veg and were perhaps marinated in some sort of vinegar. Very strong and tasty making the small portion much more satisfying than I expected. The main I had was an adapted dish as their menu vegetarian main was not gluten free (perhaps it was a soufflé, which seems to be the trendy vegetarian main this winter). The dish had some really nice polenta cubes, and jerusalem artichoke which I love. It was also very tasty. Though I had wanted dessert, by the time I'd had an entrée and a main I was actually full! (I also had a sore back so was keen to get home.) They also had gluten free bread rolls on the starter menu, which I will definitely try at some stage. This was a really tasty dinner and I highly recommend Cobar!

Gluten Free Goodies' Pancake, Pikelet, and Waffle mix.

2009-08-17T20:48:00.001+12:00

To go back in time a little, I'll make a post about Gluten Free Goodies pancake, pikelet, and waffle mix. It was also the first time using my enamelled cast-iron skillet for pikelets, so it was a bit of a learning curve!

This was the last one cooking - also the most photogenic one

There were only a couple of blueberries in that one, as it was the bottom of the bowl.

Here's the pile of pikelets in the background, and frying bananas in the foreground.

Frying banana

I served them with maple syrup, but we ate them too fast to take photos of everything together on the plate... !

They were pretty good, though a couple were a bit tough - I think it's because each batch was cooked a bit differently. I'll have to learn how to get the right temperature, and I think they'll be fine.

Cheese Toasties and Birthday Tulips

2009-08-15T18:47:00.001+12:00

One day last weekend I was not feeling much like cooking, and I happened to have some bread leftover from a Birthday lunch at my grandmother's. She was serving soup, and as I knew she usually served up hot crusty bread, I baked a gluten-free loaf to bring along as well.

I used Bakel's multi seed bread mix, which I wrote about in this post. We were a little late to lunch, as even though I had the temperature a bit higher, it still took longer to bake than it was supposed to! Oh well.

Cheese Toasties, plus flowers!

I grilled one side of each piece, then turned them over, topping one with 'Festive Relish', one with Tamarillo Chutney, and one with jalapenos. I added a couple of slices of parmesan (it's all we had, but was a good choice because it gave good flavour without too much cheese), and grilled until bubbly and ready.

Here's a closer look at the toasties, in case you're not already hungry enough:

Yum...

And a closer look at the tulips. My grandmother gave these to me for my birthday (along with a couple of other very thoughtful gifts - I felt very spoilt).

Tulips on the table

This is them a couple of days later, it was such a simple joy watching them open, and seeing them each time I passed the dining table.

Tulips, closer

Aren't they pretty?

Cereal Post - I wish I could think of a worthy pun!

2009-08-13T21:25:00.004+12:00

All I could think of was 'OMG, srly?', but Neil did not approve. (Get it? Get it?)

Anyway, moving on.

I burnt my cereal this morning!

This sounds like a slightly unusual statement to make - I was toasting puffed millet and amaranth under the grill, but got distracted by something on the internet and forgot I was toasting cereal until I wondered what the strange popping sounds coming from the kitchen were.

Burnt Cereal

No great catastrophe, a wee bit black on one side, but I ate it anyway as I hate to waste. (Also, I don't mind things a little bit dark sometimes.)

I guess this could be a good opportunity to talk about cereal. Man gluten-free cereal can be expensive! And some of it's pretty uninspiring, as well. I've always been a fan of nice toasted muesli with crunchy oats and lots of good bits and pieces. Most gluten-free 'muesli' is basically just some blend of different things that I consider 'cereal', such as puffs or processed bran flakes - things that don't hold their crunch in the face of milk. Other so called 'muesli' has turned out to just be rice bubbles with a very sparse sprinkling of seeds and fruit. I know I shouldn't be sucked in by the pictures on the boxes, but I am still disappointed every time they exaggerate the proportion of delicious to boring ingredients.

The cereal/'muesli' I buy most commonly is Healtheries Apricot and Coconut Muesli. This is generally one of the cheapest products I can find in the supermarket without completely giving up on the type of thing I like to eat for breakfast. At $7 a box it's still not actually cheap, but it's often got a small discount, and it's way better value than the $10 or $11 that most boxes of similar products seem to be.

I did once find a small stone in my cereal - but I was happy with the response from Healtheries, who sent me a courier bag to send them the stone for analysis, as well as a voucher for free cereal. Yay!

Not having that voucher with me one day when I went to buy cereal, I decided to try a new and very fancy looking product: Brookfarm gluten-free macadamia muesli. This Australian cereal had two silver medals and a bronze medal stuck on the front (well - not the medals themselves, but icons that represented them), and I could see (and taste!) why. This was some seriously gourmet muesli. It did cost about $13 for a mere 350g, but I am still sure I would buy this again. Actually, I tried to, but the supermarket only had two gluten-containing varieties.

The macadamia muesli has buckwheat (puffed and not-puffed), rice (bran and puffed), and amaranth, as well as cranberries, currants, and sultanas, macadamia nuts, and pumpkin seeds. These were tastily toasted and crunchy - and I fell instantly in love with the crunch of the buckwheat, which sunk to the bottom of my cereal bowl for me to enjoy at the end! My only half-hearted complaint about the taste of the cereal is that it was really a bit too sweet. At 14.3g of sugar per 100g, it's actually lower sugar than my regular cereal (19.9g!), but it certainly tastes sweeter. Actually, because rice milk is so sweet by itself, I prefer a somewhat less sweet cereal to go with it.

Actually, I'm surprised that the macadamia muesli is lower in sugar, higher in protein and fibre, and though higher in fat overall, it's lower in saturated fat!

My plan is to combat the sweetness (and the price!) of the almost perfect macadamia muesli by mixing it with some plain grains to tome down the sweetness and make it go a bit further. That's why I was toasting puffed millet and amaranth - I had bought both for this purpose and I was testing out ways to give them a bit more crunch. It occurred to me that this might not save money, given that the millet and amaranth were about $6 a bag each - but perhaps I can get them cheaper elsewhere. I do hope I can source the macadamia muesli again, even though the puffed cereals alone make quite a tasty breakfast.

So that's me on gluten-free cereals. Apart from hot cereals - I haven't perfected those yet. I currently mix rice flakes and cornmeal, but they don't match the flavour of good old hearty porridge (don't forget the salt)!

Cookbook Case Study - Food Legends of the World

2009-08-11T21:19:00.003+12:00

The third book I have chosen to review is 'Food Legends of the World: Traditional Tales with Recipes of Today', by Linda Bremford. More information on this book can be found at this address.

I bought the book from a local craft market, directly from the author. A storyteller by trade, the author tells the legends of 25 ingredients, following each one with a recipe. I loved this concept and was tempted to buy the book.

While not all the recipes are suitable for my diet, I was able to choose some recipes that I could play with. My choices were:

Potato Pepper Bake
Tomato chilli with marinated mozzarella
Beans tijuana
Maple syrup, ginger, and rum ice cream
Egg and milk in a baked ice cream dessert

One80 Lounge Bar Restaurant

2009-08-08T19:35:00.001+12:00

One80 Lounge Bar Restaurant is associated with Copthorne Hotel on Oriental Parade.

Their menu is impressively both vegetarian and gluten-free friendly, leaving me two dishes to choose from which were both. (Actually, it's that the only two vegetarian options were gluten-free - these were available as either an entrée or a main.) Those who are gluten-free but not vegetarian had a much wider choice. There were no vegan options on the menu.

After debating whether I should order a main and dessert, or two entrées and dessert, my sister and I decided to order one main each, and go half and half. She ordered Stilton Stuffed Mushrooms (after recently discovering her love for blue cheese), and I ordered Arancini with Buffalo Mozzarella.

Arancini are essentially crumbed risotto balls. These were served on a plate of a red pepper sauce that was, quite simple, yummy! Each vegetarian dish had three 'pieces' so we swapped plates twice during the meal. The stilton stuffed mushroom was also tasty, for those who like the strength of the cheese at least, but I was pleased to start and finish with the arancini - it seemed a more filling meal.

The size of the mains was such that we were happy without having had an entrée - though we'd started with an olive and almond platter. Neil and my mum both had the fish of the day, I think with fennel and a leek purée. Most of us just had space for dessert.

The dessert I had was butterscotch crème brulée. Truly my favourite fancy dessert! This was served with chocolate-dipped gingerbread which I palmed off to mum for a work snack the next day. The crème brulée itself, I have to admit, was not the best I've had. It was very thick, and a bit heavy for my liking. This could well be a result of using actual double cream, which is difficult to find in NZ (if even possible!) Or it could have been a result of the butterscotch perhaps being too buttery. Apart from the sugar on top, it wasn't particularly sweet, either. It was probably nice, but not quite they way I would have liked it!

Neil and mum were twins again and ordered cherry chocolate crumble. This looked pretty good, but both of them said they probably wouldn't bother with it again. The crumble topping did actually look a bit breakfast cereal-y, and I guess the inside just wasn't quite right?

The service throughout the meal was good, the people were friendly. They apologised for the wait for food, but we hadn't even noticed. (Perhaps they were used to hotel patrons who want to eat quickly before going out - whereas we were having a dinner event so were happy to take our time, chat, and look at the old family photos my grandmother sent with a birthday card!)

The cost was fairly high, but not unreasonable considering a main dish was enough for a meal, rather than tiny serves where you need the whole three courses to have enough. The atmosphere was good, as was the shiny view of the city from the 7th floor location.

Given that their menu could accommodate me without adjustment, and I was impressed with the arancini, I'd definitely go there again. We'd just go without desserts!

Restaurant Frustrations

2009-08-06T17:53:00.003+12:00

In a fit of dread, I got my sister to call around restaurants to book for my birthday dinner tonight. I couldn't face the constant 'vegetarian AND gluten free?? nothing', or 'we have a green salad' that I inevitably get. Luckily because it's my birthday I got to delegate the booking responsibility, yet I still found the process stressful. Marika reported the results back to me as the following:

No. 1 Upland Rd - No.

Plate - No. (Though maybe a salad.)

Herd St. - Answer machine.

La Belle Histoire - Nothing on menu, but kitchen staff suggested chef should be able to do something. (Chef wasn't in yet.)

I finally got her to call one of the few places in the Entertainment Book who had some items marked as either (v) or (gf), so I thought they may be able to do something that was both!:

One80 (Copthorne Hotel) - Yes! Summary of options was: Starters - olive thing. Entrée/Main - stuffed mushroom or risotto ball. Dessert - crème brulée. So we've booked. This was the priciest of our options (and the one review I've read said excellent service, average food), but hopefully everything will work out okay!

Mushrooms and Mash

2009-08-02T21:50:00.002+12:00

Mushrooms and Mash
Originally uploaded by bezajel

How to serve mash that's less boring than just mash.

On the left we have: Mashed potato and broccoli, with bok choi.

On the right we have: Mashed potato, kumara, and chickpeas.

Both mashes include liberal salt, pepper, olive oil, and rice milk.

Topped off with sauteed mushroom.

Delicious.

Only - don't try and use mash as a way to sneak chickpeas in for someone who doesn't like chickpeas - even though you can't taste them, the person who doesn't like chickpeas will!

(I wasn't really trying to sneak chickpeas in, just boost the protein!)

Bakels Bread Mix

2009-07-28T20:47:00.001+12:00

A little while ago I had my first foray into gluten-free breadmaking, with the help of Bakels gluten free bread mix. I bought this mix because it was full of seeds and I prefer my bread to have stuff in it! It contains sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and flax seeds. The mix also contains milk so not suitable for vegans or GFCF, obviously - but I wanted to try something that wasn't just white.

The dough was much wetter than I imagined to be normal for bread - but then again I'd only ever made bread in a bread maker. The dough is more like thick pikelet dough. It's pretty easy to make - there's no kneading, just beating with the hand beater and hey presto!

Hey Presto!

I left it to rise on the floor in front of the heater. I couldn't think of anywhere else that would be even vaguely warm. That seemed to do. It didn't really rise, but it did get a bit lighter, which seemed about right for the consistency of the dough.

Rising?

It took ages to cook, I kept sticking a skewer in and it came out doughy. I don't know, perhaps I had the oven temperature wrong. In fact, our oven only does a few temperatures, so if the recipe asks for something in between, you're left to choose. I chose low - would have been fine if I'd chosen high, as my oven is probably low anyway. We tried fan bake for a little bit, realised we were just crisping the outside, then just left the oven on higher for the last while. It probably took almost twice as long to cook as it was supposed to because of all the temperature changing!

Mmmm cooked bread

When it finally cooked and came out of the oven, and I cut some up while it was still fairly hot and soft. As I was giving a piece to my sister, Neil tasted the bread and exclaimed from the kitchen with GREAT surprise: "What????? This is really good!!! It's not all heavy and bad like gluten free bread!!!!!", which really goes to show that what you get at the supermarket is crapola. When I served the soup to go with the bread he was like: "Can I just have bread?" Not a bad endorsement from a gluten-eater.

Slightly ragged slice of bread

So... success! (even if it did take three hours).

The bread was fantastic that night. I took the rest of the loaf to work with some sandwich fillings to give it the next-day test. The bread wasn't quite suitable for sandwiches - the top broke off as I tried to cut it, and the inside was fairly fragile. I had a few small squares with a peice of tomato on top, and then made a rough sandiwch with cheese and tomato which I toasted. This sealed the outside of the bread and held it together, leaving the inside soft and yummy. The slices were enormously thick to be able to cut the bread without it breaking too much! This made the toastie machine hard to close. But the results were good.

Cheese toasted sandwich (one I made at home, later).

The most fun thing about taking the bread to work was having a few discussions with random people about making bread, and about gluten free bread. One guy I talked to has a daughter who is GFCF and vegetarian. Snap! (Well, almost...)

I'll be happy to make this bread again. In fact, I wish I could eat it right now, so hungry!

Maple Mustard Brussells Sprouts

2009-07-22T21:19:00.002+12:00

A few weeks ago at the markets, I spied a bag of brussells sprouts, and thought - hey, why not attempt to cook the world's most hated vegetable?

Actually, to be honest, I've never particularly disliked brussells sprouts. I've had some so-so ones that tasted a little strange, but I've also had ones that almost melted in my mouth in a cluster of texturey goodness. Mmm!

Arriving home with my stash, I thought of ways to cook the sprouts. I had seen a few recipes for roasted sprouts, and I seemed to remember seeing a recipe pairing brussells sprouts and maple syrup. I used the trusty Internet to find myself a few recipes, many of them for maple mustard sprouts. Using a couple of recipes as a basis for experimentation, I pulled out the gas burner and heated up the wok...

The results were yummy. And so they should be - I almost finished our bottle of maple syrup. Our little 237ml (8 fl.oz.) bottle of maple syrup, that cost $20 to replace. Why so expensive? Well, Neil says it's organic and tapped by naked virgins.

Ridiculously expensive maple syrup aside, here's a sort of vague recipe-ish type thing!:

Maple Mustard Brussells Sprouts

Maple Mustard Brussells Sprouts

Ingredients

a generous amount of olive oil and butter
brussells sprouts, trimmed and halved, or quartered if large
a generous spoon of dijon mustard
about a quarter cup of maple syrup
a tablespoon or so of apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper

Method

Heat the oil and butter in a wok.

  Brown the sprouts for a few minutes on each side, adding salt and pepper.  

Mix the mustard, maple syrup, and cider vinegar, add to the wok, and cook, tossing often, until the sprouts are cooked through and the sauce sticks to the sprouts.

Serve, eat, and savour.

Mis-identified Vegetable and Green Pizza

2009-07-21T17:19:00.001+12:00

I mis-identified a vegetable I used in my garlic greens stir-fry! I thought what I'd used was broccolini, but now I think it was kai-lan, otherwise known as Chinese broccoli or Chinese kale. According to Wikipedia, broccolini is a cross between broccoli and kai-lan, so at least I was in the right family. Thanks to The Crispy Cook for posting about Chinese broccoli, leading to the discovery of my error! I have to say, I like the name Green Lance best, and love the superhero outfit Rachel donned for her post.

I had a bunch of leftovers from my green stir-fry, and a little bit of chilli leftover from some I had frozen recently. Instead of my usual pizza toppings, I used chilli in place of tomato paste, and cooked greens as the vegetable component.

Freshly Made Leftover Pizza

Not expecting too much from my leftover concoction, I was pleasantly surprised that this was one of the best pizzas I've made! I'll definitely be trying to re-create this one when I have the right leftovers lying around.

Cookbook Case Study - Quick and Easy - Wrap Up

2009-07-18T17:53:00.002+12:00

I really enjoyed the recipes I made from Quick & Easy: Vegetarian Recipes from Around the World for Western Kitchens. Despite burning myself making pot-roasted rice, I really enjoyed the rice and the cardamom mushrooms I made with it. I'll keep the frying-rice-in-peanut-oil technique in mind for next time I want to subtly dress up rice, but I'll be a bit more careful with temperatures.

The two sweet recipes I made from the book were more interesting to me than the savoury. I don't make as many international desserts as I do international main meals, so making dal and jaggery payasam was as exciting and fulfilling as it was delicious and filling! Heavily palm-sugar flavoured, this best accompanies banana and coconut milk to cool it down a little. However, the introduction to the recipe did claim that jaggery is considered to be a 'heating' food, given to children in lumps to nibble during winter. (Nibbling on lumps of jaggery certainly appeals to me!) The second recipe that I made after quite a delay, was for peanut cookies, making a delicious light peanut macaroon that I am looking forward to making again already.

I'm far from finished with this book. There are a number of pages I've stuck bookmarks on, which include recipes such as 'khatti mithi masoor dal' (sweet and sour red lentils), aloo mattar, and 'kab el ghzal' (almond crescents made with ground almond and rose or orange blossom water). Yes, I can see myself enjoying the book for some time. I would certainly recommend it to anyone - vegetarians and omnivores alike - especially to people interested in cooking simple international meals. One thing I particularly like about this book is that it goes beyond India and Asia, including recipes from Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East - culinary regions that I know much less about.

Cookbook Case Study - Peanut Cookies - Quick and Easy

2009-07-17T18:41:00.002+12:00

For some reason, I'd been putting off making this last recipe from Global Vegetarian Cooking: Quick & Easy Recipes from Around the World. I'm not sure why - perhaps I had some perception that it would be difficult or complicated - or I thought I didn't have time, expecting it to take much longer than it did. Happily, my procrastination has come to an end! I made the Peanut Cookies (macaroons) from Guadeloupe last night while I was avoiding making dinner. (Okay, perhaps my procrastination hasn't come to an end - it just moved on to something else.)

The recipe truly is simple. Beat egg whites, beat in sugar, stir in ground peanuts and vanilla essence. Bake. The only caution I have is to perhaps use baking paper, as I had some trouble getting the cookies off the baking tray once they were done. I even managed to scrape the surface of my baking tray off with a knife in the process - slightly worrying.

Ready for the oven

We had a cookie each with icecream and chocolate syrup for dessert. As they are meringue based, they go better with icecream than cookie cookies do, I think. I managed to avoid eating more until the next day, when I brought four cookies in to give to a friend, and two for myself. (Apparently, the four cookies for my friend disappeared that afternoon - they are so light and moreish that I'm not surprised!)

I received the following by email shortly after handing them over:

that was one of the best things I've eaten in ages - so nice and light and lovely tasting~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was certainly pleased that she liked them as much as I did! On arriving home, two more cookies quickly evaporated into my mouth, while I worked on making some bread. From the batch of 12, this leaves two. If she's lucky, there might be one for my sister to try if she drops in later tonight. (If there's not... I hope she doesn't read this and find out!)

Pile of Cookies

So, the verdict is: cookies that are quick, easy, and delicious! Also, not overly loaded with sugar (the recipe from the book has more egg white and much less sugar than the similar recipes I've found online) or fat (only really the fat from the peanuts). They are crunchy, crumbly, good enough to share or to keep greedily to yourself... I am already planning when I'll make these next, and I can see myself getting a lot of use out of the recipe.

In fact, the only problem is thinking of what to do with spare egg yolks! (Hint: it's not putting them in a stirfry - sometimes I wonder how I can even justify having a food blog when I do questionable things like that!)

Homemade Chocolate Syrup from Small Notebook

2009-07-14T22:12:00.002+12:00

I came across this recipe for homemade chocolate syrup on Rachel's Small Notebook blog, one of my favourite home management blogs in the 'lifestyle' section of my Google Reader.

Making a recipe within hours of stumbling across if is some kind of record for me - I have hundreds of delicious recipes bookmarked that I never quite get around to making! In fact, the main reason I made this so soon is that I was waiting for Neil to get home with the groceries I needed in order to make the bread and cookies I had planned to. I guess he was working a few more hours than expected - I hope coming home to fresh chocolate syrup made up for that a wee bit! The other reason I could make this syrup, of course, was that it is incredibly simple and uses only ingredients we always have!

I won't repost the recipe - you can find it here, and at the same time check out one of my current sources of inspiration for trying to get my life tidy and together!

I might have splashed a little too much vanilla essence in there (Measuring spoons? Psh! - actually, mine were in the dishwasher...), but the syrup is still tasty as. I poured it into an old tomato passata jar, not exactly as fancy as Rachel did it, but functional. (My original idea, an old gin bottle, would be too small to hold two cups of syrup.)

Chocolate Syrup in Passata Jar

Menu Planning: Kumara Rosti, Fried Haloumi, and Garlic Greens

2009-07-13T21:32:00.005+12:00

I've started menu planning. Or should I say, I've started menu planning again, as I was planning weekly a few months ago. Everything stops when I get stressed or busy, and plans go unmade or out the kitchen window.

This time, I've decided to try a monthly menu plan following a vague set pattern based on the carb component of the meal, which currently looks something like this:

Mon - Pasta/Noodles
Tues - Rice/Quinoa
Wed - Tortilla/Taco/Nachos
Thurs - Eat out
Fri - Pizza
Sat - Potato/Kumara
Sun - ??? + Baking

At the start of each month, I'll sit down and map out ideas for how to serve these things in a slightly different way each week, and at the start of each week I'll figure out the specifics of what dishes or recipes to make, and what veggies I need to pick up at the markets for the week. Well, that's the plan. I've cooked like this for one week so far, and have planned for the next! Obviously, flexibility for other activities or anticipated laziness is required. I can just shift a meal left or right a day. We don't eat out every week, and Sunday is also free to pick up any extra meals I couldn't be bothered making throughout the week.

Last week, my most adventurous dish was Kumara Rosti with Fried Haloumi and Garlic Greens. All of these were new to me: The greens and the haloumi were self evident, but I consulted a potato rosti recipe that I'd had my eye on for some time (in one of my favourite cookbooks: Vegie Food). Essentially - I substituted kumara for the potato without thinking about it, but that didn't seem to work. Perhaps it was a difference in sugar or water content of kumara compared to potato, perhaps it was equipment, luck, or let's face it, talent (or lack thereof), but what I got was not rosti. It was more like kumara mash or scramble. It tasted fantastic, but rosti it was not.

I bought these greens from the markets, not knowing what they were:

Mystery Greens

I asked the seller what it was, and he just said "it's like bok choi", which was only vaguely helpful.

Kumara

Rosti ingredients all together

The rosti was supposed to cook for 8 minutes on a medium to low heat, until golden and crispy. After that time, nothing seemed to be happening. After a second 8 minutes on an even higher heat, the kumara seemed to be steaming. Another 8 minutes, at an even higher temperature, and still little had changed. Eight more minutes (a total of 32 minutes), and it seemed to finally be browning slightly at the edges. It turns out, though, that this may have been a problem of heat distribution:

Rosti Fail

I also had a bit of trouble estimating the amount of greens required:

Overfilled wok

Luckily, this all reduced down to a manageable amount after flipping it around with tongs for a while. Time to fry the haloumi:

Cheeeeesy

In the end I got there, and served up the rosti, haloumi, and greens:

Dinner, served!

Anyway, at the end of this journey, I can give you some recipes!

Kumara Scramble:

Ingredients
800g kumara, peeled
Finely chopped onion
Fresh or dried herbs (eg. parsley, mixed herbs)
Butter and/or olive oil - a generous amount for frying.

Method
If your kumara are large (mine was a single one weighing 800g!), cut into potato-sized pieces. Boil for 10-15 minutes or until they start to soften. Once at a manageable temperature, grate the kumara, and mix with the onion and herbs. Season. Heat butter and/or olive oil in a non-stick frypan. Fry the kumera on a medium-high heat until fully cooked and browned in places. You may either attempt to make small rosti, or just mix it all up and treat as a scramble.

Garlic greens:

Ingredients
Mix of favourite greens - I used bok choi, broccolini, and some random pale green vegetable.
Huge spoon of garlic - as much as you dare
olive (or other) oil. (I also used some butter - but I think it would have been better without)

Method
Heat oil in a wok and cook garlic for a short time until starting to brown. Add greens and fry until cooked. Don't be like me and assume that all greens cook in no time, or they will be tough and unpleasant. Cook your greens properly!

Serve with your choice of protein, for example fried haloumi OR baked tofu (such as this yummy herbed lemon tofu).