Paparazzo

Snaps and casual photos around  interesting cuisine tourism venues.

This month - culinary talent, winning chips, bangers and Diana Krall, Kohu Road ice-cream, living herbs, oysters fresh, kanga bangers, Royal Pinot, Aussie wine icon.

Salmon heaven - souse me gently

These salmon recipes leave the texture and taste of this beautiful fish as natural as you can get, short of eating it sashimi. And we use the delectable Atlantic salmon now available through the Sealord brand – a fish very different from the king salmon we have become so accustomed to in New Zealand.

Sousing (curing) salmon with a flavoured mixture of salt and sugar is a very old method of preserving fish and probably best known in this country as gravad lax (gravet laks).

How green is his garden

Standing out amongst the trend for kitchen tricks and flavour mixes that would have had the great Escoffier weeping into his stock pot are a handful of chefs in New Zealand preaching a simple, back-to-basics message that puts ‘product first’, and the fresher the better. 

One such vegetable garden-loving culinary champs is Jonny (no ‘h’) Schwass with a boutique namesake restaurant in Christchurch and a passion for organically grown vegetables. 

Toheroa - heritage memories

When Max recalls his childhood growing up in Dargaville near the Kaipara Coast – one memory takes precedent, that of his father preparing a local shellfish so delicious and sought-after, it used to be canned and exported in vast quantities. By Tobias George.

Known by its Māori name toheroa, or long tongue, this large, endemic Kiwi clam once rivalled the turtle for the culinary world’s soup-tureen crown. 

Toheroa have a taste like no other seafood and were once so plentiful on Northland’s west-coast beaches that there were three canning factories in the region, exporting the tongue meat and the distinctive yellow-green soup to the four corners of the globe. .  

Risotto challenge 

sesame tuna & kaffir lime

The problem with risotto is that it is not a ‘recipe’ so much as an Italian ‘expression’ for a method of cooking rice, and there’s probably more bad risotto dishes made around the world every day than there are burnt sausages.

There’s no definitive risotto recipe, and even in Italy the dish varies between regions. While the rice is supposed to be ‘creamy’, the risotto-eating world is divided between those who like their rice to be wet and paste-like or drier like Spanish paella, where you don’t stir the rice.
 
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Understanding sausages

'Don’t tie your dog to a leash of sausages', goes an old French proverb, and ‘never ask what’s in your sausage’ is an equally wise Kiwi saying because you might not want to know. Sausages are only as good as what’s put into them and a sure way of knowing what’s inside the casing is to buy the best or make your own – which is surprisingly simple.

The universal popularity of sausages, particularly among kids and barbecue Neanderthals, has a lot to do with their ubiquitous shape, unrecognizable ingredients and concentrated flavour.

Panna cotta challenge

Cooking cream or milk into a custard or a firm junket-like pudding has to be one of the world’s oldest desserts. We explored a consensus of ‘panna cotta’ recipes set with gelatine to provide a basic recipe for you to add your own flavours. To provide you with inspiration we present three delicious recipes of our own.
 
Panna cotta or ‘cooked cream’ from Northern Italy is a collaboration of cream, sugar and gelatine (or gelatin US) that has rivaled ‘burnt cream’ (crème brulee) on restaurant dessert menus in recent years.. 

Wine - 2010 harvest update

If I had to use just one word to encapsulate the feelings of wine growers and wine makers around the country over the 2010 grape harvest it would ‘happy’. Summer, although later than expected and cooler in some areas, has delivered up some spectacular results. By Cameron Douglas MS.
 
While quality seems to be high quantity across the country ranges from average to lighter than 2009. This is a good message for both producers and drinkers as there has been the need for some leveling out in the industry and sadly a few casualties along the way.