Articles

Really easy quinoa, bean and beetroot salad with balsamic dressing Unless you’re careful, December can turn into a month of eating terribly – too many ‘treats’ and not enough of the good stuff. Here’s a salad to redress the balance (plus it looks appropriately festive).…

Strawberry, radish and cucumber salad This morning I’ve been for a run around the harbour and a quick dip in Oriental Bay on the way home. Spring has a bad reputation in Wellington (expressed best in this calendar), but today feels like one of those…

Is there any hope for unfashionable silverbeet? If you’re a silverbeet fan, it’s my public duty to warn you that it’s going out of fashion. You’ll probably know this already, because silverbeet (known as chard in the northern hemisphere) is the party guest no one…

Who wants some old-fashioned self-saucing chocolate and raspberry pudding? In the depths of winter, one dessert reigns supreme in my household. On a dark, wet night (or even a gloomy afternoon with a chill in the air), one of us will generally say to the…

How to make Nuts & Bolts In these trying times, it helps to have a reassuring snack at hand. If you want something to briefly take your mind off the woes of the world, I have the snack for you: Nuts & Bolts. For the…

Asparagus with mustard crème fraîche Do you snap or cut? Peel or shave? The start of the asparagus season often ignites debate between cooks about whether it’s better to cut off the woody ends (gives a neat finish) or snap them (feels satisfying, but has…

Feijoa skin syrup (and 9 other ways with feijoas) I’m just about asleep when I hear it the first time. It’s a dull, definite thud, just outside the back door. There’s no wind and no traffic noise, just the moreporks saying good night to each…

Black Doris plum and coconut clafoutis How familiar are you with the collected works of Enid Blyton? If you’re considering choosing the English writing powerhouse as a Mastermind topic, I’d think again. She churned out hundreds and hundreds of books, short stories and other pieces…

Aunty Pat’s never-fail pavlova Having just outed myself as a pavlova-denier, I should probably head into witness protection for a while. To prove that I’m not a complete monster, here’s my wonderful Aunty Pat’s peerless recipe. It’s unbeatable! Aunty’s Pat’s never-fail pavlova At the risk…

Perfect boiled eggs with pepita dukkah Did you know that if you Google ‘how to boil an egg’ it comes up with more than 150 million options? This, more than anything, is a sign that there is Too Much Information in the world. I bet…

Kupu Kāuta – Te Reo Māori Kitchen Terms It’s Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori – Māori Language Week – in New Zealand, which is as good a time as any to learn some useful words and phrases for your favourite kitchen activities. My te…

Kitchen DIY: Goats’ curd Q: What do you call a goat that’s sitting around doing nothing? A: Billy Idol. I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. I fell down a rabbit hole of goat memes on the internet the other day and bad goat jokes were rife.…

How to cook salmon in a plastic bag Last week a very clever former vegetarian friend confessed she was terrified of cooking fish. After years of avoiding it, she felt completely in the dark about where – and how – to start. I rattled off…

Treat me: Easy coffee sorbet Once upon a time I had a flatmate called Justin who ate, drank, lived and breathed coffee. He worked at a coffee roastery, he installed a state-of-the-art coffee machine in our house and he happily spent hours teaching everyone how…

How to make the perfect viniagrette Q: Why did the tomato blush?A: Because it saw the salad dressing. I’ve always loved that joke, partly because it’s about the only punchline that I can remember. But all jokes aside, some people should blush with embarrassment at…

Shocking pink beetroot bread Do not adjust your screen: this bread really is THAT pink. I’ve been having a little bit of fun in the last couple of weeks, experimenting with adding vegetable purees to bread dough. I told the Small Girl I was going…

Treat me: Golden Kiwi Cake If you think you’ve had a bad week, spare a thought for New Zealand’s kiwifruit growers. A bacterial disease is slowly, insidiously, infecting crops across the country like something out of a horror movie. Every week at the supermarket I…

101* ways with a stale baguette When we got back from the West Coast (another nail-biting ride, thank you, Air New Zealand) I opened the freezer and realised that we had nothing to eat. Well, that’s not strictly true. There was some ice cream, a…